free-verse68 lines
Prismatic Boston
by Arthur MacyFair city by the famed Batrachian Pool,
Wise in the teachings of the Concord School;
Home of the Eurus, paradise of cranks,
Stronghold of thrift, proud in your hundred banks;
Land of the mind-cure and the abstruse book,
The Monday lecture and the shrinking Cook;
Where twin-lensed maidens, careless of their shoes,
In phrase Johnsonian oft express their views;
Where realistic pens invite the throng
To mention "spades," lest "shovels" should be wrong;
Where gaping strangers read the thrilling ode
To Pilgrim Trousers on the West-End road;
Where strange sartorial questions as to pants
Offend our "sisters, cousins, and our aunts;"
Where men expect by simple faith and prayer
To lift a lid and find a dollar there;
Where labyrinthine lanes that sinuous creep
Make Theseus sigh and Ariadne weep;
Where clubs gregarious take commercial risks
'Mid fluctuations of alluring disks;
Where Beacon Hill is ever proud to show
Her reeking veins of liquid indigo;
To thee, fair land, I dedicate my song,
And tell how simple, artless minds go wrong.
A Common Councilman, with lordly air,
One day went strolling down through Copley Square.
Within his breast there beat a spotless heart;
His taste was pure, his soul was steeped in art.
For he had worshiped oft at Cass's shrine,
Had daily knelt at Cogswell's fount divine,
And chaste surroundings of the City Hall
Had taught him much, and so he knew it all.
Proud, in a sack coat and a high silk hat,
Content in knowing just "where he was at,"
He wandered on, till gazing toward the skies,
A nameless horror met his modest eyes;
For where the artist's chisel had engrossed
An emblem fit on Boston's proudest boast,
There stood aloft, with graceful equipoise,
Two very small, unexpurgated boys.
Filled with solicitude for city youth,
Whose morals suffer when they're told the truth,
Whose ethic standards high and higher rise,
When taught that God and nature are but lies,
In haste he to the council chamber hied,
His startled fellow-members called aside,
His fearful secret whispering disclosed,
Till all their separate joints were ankylosed.
Appalling was the silence at his tale;
Democrats turned red, Republicans turned pale.
What mugwumps turned 'tis difficult to think,
But probably they compromised on pink.
When these stern moralists had their breaths regained,
And told how deeply they were shocked and pained,
They then resolved how wrong our children are,
Said, "Boys should be contented with a scar,"
Rebuked Dame Nature for her deadly sins,
And damned trustees who foster "Heavenly Twins."
O Councilmen, if it were left for you
To say what art is false and what is true,
What strange anomalies would the world behold!
Dolls would be angels, dross would count for gold;
Vice would be virtue, virtues would be taints;
Gods would be devils, Councilmen be saints;
And this sage law by your wise minds be built:
"No boy shall live if born without a kilt."
Then you'd resolve, to soothe all moral aches,
"We're always right, but God has made mistakes."