Sunday, November 23, 2014

Corporate Obsolescence

The tractor factory once
aproned in streetside grass
inspired long city blocks with
hum and bricked-in shiny glass.
It was given to tootings and
merry gliffs of steam,
and swarmed as the shifts shifted.

Now jolting past
in the bad years
from the hot streetcar windows, see:
old railroad grit, strawed weeds,
boarded-up windows - some
slant-broken in to shadow.
Nobody walks along that stretch.

People live near, across and up
in the streets that somehow show
too the hard times.

There they are! people.
Outside a flase-bright 'Bowlerama':
crammed almost on the gritty sidewalk is
some 'sidewalk-cafe' - furniture
(without parasols); they hoist
tinned drinks from a Coinamatic.
How jaunty, how
almost persuasive.

The streetcar colours are as
glittering-fake as their
cafe's. Neither
quite get us there.
- Margaret Avison, "Corporate Obsolescence: A Sad Poem in a Sad Summer"

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