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Gasometer - Poem
Literary Review, Wntr, 2002 by Edwin Morgan
Gasometer You don't care about the wildness of the sky, my old gasometer! The kitchen window frames your gaunt frame, the black cross-struts stand firm, stand out, unyielding to the passion of reds and purples in the dying day. I have seen your stark ring taking sunlight till you were something molten, vanishing, magical--and when the moment passed you were strong and dark as your dead hammermen. (They whistle in the long-gone sheds. Listen!) You cannot hide where your strength comes from. You are constructivist to the core. Did you want gargoyles to crouch in your angles? I don't think so. Yours is the art of use. You could be painted, floodlit, archeologized, but I prefer the unremitting stance of what you were in what you are, no more. You are an iron guard or talisman, and I hear that those who talk of eyesores you have consigned, bless you, to the bad place. Day of tearing down, day of recycling, wait a while! Let the wind whistle through those defenceless arms and the moon bend a modicum of its glamorous light upon you, my familiar, my stranded hulk--a while!
Edwin Morgan is retired as Professor of English at the University of Glasgow and continues to live in Glasgow. His poems, translations, and essays have been widely published and anthologized. His numerous books of poetry include Virtual and Other Realities, Sonnets from Scotland, Poems of Thirty Years (which won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award), From Glasgow to Saturn, The New Divan, Concrete Poems, and a collection of translations, Rites of Passage.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Fairleigh Dickinson University
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
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