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Monday 12 March 2012

Building Site : The New Complex

Looking down into a cauldron that's coming to the boil,
imagination making bubbles in the sand. Sand bubbling
along before the diggers, 'dozers, donkey-workers and
a trail of toiling tractors. There Levels 1 through 2
to Level 3 are to be flattened, levelled out to make a plane
as level as the playing fields of politicians' dreams.

More elegant and slender yet, than garden trellises,
tall spires of steel, and cables thin as spider silk, ascend,
section upon section, past my viewpoint, past my eyes,
to partly vanish in the mist where is - but not for long -
the wonder of a sky unable to survive the final phase,
for other wonders yet are on the way. We're looking at

the modern counterpart of something like Stonehenge,
for there above the towers, the booms have made their bows.
They criss-cross just below the sky in horizontal play
where they'll whisk away the daylight with their loads.
Where yesterday was green land and a doctor's surgery,
are now the forceful signs of progress on the way.

Beyond all this, the end game signs, last days for some:
steel girders rise in 3-D matrices like one enormous puzzle
that a cruel world has set, yet knows you will not solve it, for
the biggest puzzle no one gets is what the puzzle is.
Let's guess each space is glass or grey - there must be
something we can do to win this life's life-changing prize!

12 comments:

Jinksy said...

I'm swamped and shut in after reading this... Monster buildings have little to endear them to the eyes, let alone the soul...

Brian Miller said...

ha, nice social statement in the levels being flattened, intentional or otherwise...made me think of when we run out of space, just building right on top of what is already there...

Carl said...

Life is entropy and change and rebuilding. Not always for the better.

haricot said...

How energetic you are, Dave! I was staying away from my PC for a while, but you have done your work restlessly...energetic words on monster-like buildings, and it let me think about our future.

Tommaso Gervasutti said...

yes this is the kind of hope and "estranging" feeling we all really can have in a cruel world of steel girders.

Manicddaily said...

Ha! Everyone plays the game without really knowing the rules! Or secret prize! Too much a secret!

Interesting poem. I love the geometrics. K.

Windsmoke. said...

Monster buildings made of glass and steel have no style or soul and are not very pleasing to the eye, in fact they are quite bland :-).

ds said...

"the biggest puzzle no one gets is what the puzzle is." So true that. If only the monster building's monster builders would every realize that they are not re-creating Stonehenge, but its opposite. Thanks for this.

David Cranmer said...

My thoughts closely follow haricot's comment. You're an amazing poetry machine, Dave.

Dave King said...

Jinksy
I do so agree. I dread to see the final outcome.

Brian
Like in the cemetaries, you mean?

Carl
True. Maybe I'm prejudging, but so often the result is not what the area needs.

haricot
Restless rather than energetic, methinks!

Tommaso
Something about the remorselessness of it struck me - but after I had written the poem.

Manicddaily
Yes, I like the idea of a game in which the rules are not revealed.

Windsmoke
Indeed... exactly my fear.

ds
Good point. Well made.

David
Thanks for saying so, but maybe like the high wire walker who couldn't stop without falling off?

Helen said...

'The Ghost Of Our Old Selves' ... intrigued by the title, what followed kept me riveted!

Ygraine said...

It is quite frightening isn't it?
What WILL happen when we run out of space for any more buildings?
And think of all those trees and plants lost in the name of 'progress'....where will our oxygen come from then?
I fear we are on the path of self-destruct!