CITIES OF THE PLAIN
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here are the cabalists, the insidious committees,The panders who betray the idiot citiesFor miles and miles toward the prairie sprawled,Ignorant, soul-less, rich,Smothered in fumes of pitch? * * * * * Rooms of mahogany in tall sky scrapersSee the unfolding and the folding upOf ring-clipped papers,And letters which keep drugged the public cup.The walls hear whispers and the semi-tonesOf voices in the corner, over telephonesMuffled by Persian padding, gemmed with brass spittoons.Butts of cigars are on the glass topped table,And through the smoke, gracing the furtive Babel,The bishop's picture blesses the picaroons,Who start or stop the life of millions movingUnconscious of obedience, the plasticYielders to satanic and dynasticHands of reproaching and approving. * * * * * Here come knights armed,But with their arms concealed,And rubber heeled.Here priests and wavering want are charmed.And shadows fall here like the shark'sIn messages received or sent.Signals are flying from the battlement.And every presidentOf rail, gas, coal and oil, the parks,The receipt of custom knows, without a look,Their meaning as the code is in no book.The treasonous cracksmen of the city's wealthWatch for the flags of stealth! * * * * * Acres of coal lie fenced along the tracks.Tracks ribbon the streets, and beneath the streetsWires for voices, fire, thwart the plebiscites,And choke the counsels and symposiacsOf dreamers who have pity for the backsThat bear and bleed.All things are theirs: tracks, wires, streets and coal,The church's creed,The city's soul,The city's sea girt loveliness,The merciless and meretricious press. * * * * * Far up in a watch-tower, where the news is printed,Gray faces and bright eyes, weary and cynicalDiscuss fresh wonders of the old cabal.But nothing of its work in type is hinted:Taxes are high! The mentors of the townMust keep their taxes downOn buildings, presses, stocksIn gas, oil, coal and docks.The mahogany rooms conceal a spider manWho holds the taxing bodies through the church,And knights with arms concealed. The mentors searchThe spider man, the master publican,And for his friendship silence keep,Letting him herd the populace like sheepFor self and for the insatiable desiresOf coal and tracks and wires,Pick judges, legislators,And tax-gatherers.Or name his favorites, whom they name:The slick and sinistral,Servitors of the cabal,For praise which seems the equivalent of fame:Giving to the delicate handed crackersOf priceless safes, the spiritual slackers,The flash and thunder of front pages!And the gulled millions stare and fling their wagesWhere they are bidden, helpless and emasculate.And the unilluminate,Whose brows are brass,Who weep on every Sabbath dayFor Jesus riding on an ass,Scarce know the ass is they,Now ridden by his effigy,The publican with Jesus' painted mask,Along a way where fumes of odorless gasFirst spur then fell them from the task. * * * * * Through the parade runs swift the psychic cackleLike thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle.And the angels say to Yahveh looking downFrom the alabaster railing, on the town,O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crackWe wish we had our little Sodom back!
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