[Culture] elegy

[Benseraglio2]

elegy   scaffolds race up the walls like ivy squat Inca-nosed day workers spread pasty mortar like birthday-cake icing over square cinder blocks   two gleaming Hummers flash past, devils under their hoods   itâs spring the yuppies venture out on their decks, arranging furniture   magic sunshine glints on old green bottles in the magic gardens chaste brick lips portrude among the mosaics murals busting out all over town   Cambodian girls chatter in Khmer far from ancestral paddies   hysterical moms from Mexico to Tibet shepherd bewildered broods across the alien schoolyard   Philly is the city that loves you back, except when it doesnât   chaste maiden hips on the frontiers walking, walking -- Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Hanoi young rice shoots sprout in your footsteps, your laughing footsteps, o Mennonite daughter of the lunar New Year   clamoring scaffolds rise up to obscure paint-gleaming murals   demons in the engines jeer infernal machines accelerate, crush the sparkling green bottles against the pavement heedless, insane   apsara smiles in magic gardens ah that archaic smile! glittering glass fragments coalesce in crystal mosaics on the pavement   Philly is the city that loves you back, except when it doesnât     Ross Bender http://rossbender.org/poemstoculture.html