THE CITY MARKET PLACE
by: Edna Wahlert McCourt
- HILDREN
of the desert,
- From chimerical oases
- Of trim park and proper flower box--
- Children of kind jails
- That bar God's vistas with brick mountains,
- Drown His peace in seas of iron tumult,
- To the Market Place!
-
- Odor of the earth
- Is on farmers come to offer produce
- Royally garbed in soil with crowns of green.
- Feel and taste the stuff!
- Hear barnyard drama--drone of bees--
- See sylvan reaches yearned for--and the sky!--
- In the Market Place.
-
- Greedy folk come there;
- Past peasants wistfully rememb'ring--
- Mothers aching to fill little mouths--
- A few old-fashioned house-wives--
- Grasping grocery-men, keen-eyed--
- And little children--flower girls and newsboys--
- Fill the Market Place.
-
- Shadow-chasing children,
- When, as the shower seeks the seed,
- You win your way with frequent wavering--
- Phantom-followers,
- You will nowhere find more Truth
- With which to grace the gossamer gown of your goal
- Than in the Market Place.
-
- Beyond the stir and smell
- You can find loyal life, real men,
- And a state--simple, true,--but genuine as diamonds.
- A perfect periscope
- To draw the eye up and beyond
- (The eye half heeding heart, half deepest knowledge).
- Is the Market Place.
-
- Mature philosophy
- Smiles at the things you're striving for--
- The speed, the gewgaws, gorging and the herding,
- Sallow-faced champions,
- Offering your birthright: repose,
- And harmony with nature and your soul,
- At a market place.
-
- Conquerors of trifles--
- Of steel and all the elements,
- Of everything except Tranquility--
- Perpetual vanquishers,
- When you come to overpower that
- Seek nowhere more unerring inspiration
- Than from the Market Place.
-
- If rain forgot how to moisten,
- 'Twould remember the cloud it came from;
- When the sinner would regain his virtue,
- He recalls his mother;
- When you seek the health and wisdom
- Your heart knoweth, find them where they sprang:--
- The Market Place.
-
- It represents a life
- That lacks of your fine bawbles little,
- But encompasses all eternal verities
- You lack, children of the desert.
- Too, you can behold the deepest
- Depths of the lives and longings of your kind,
- In the Market Place.
-
- Children of the desert,
- From chimerical oases
- Of trim park and proper flower-box--
- Children of kind jails
- That bar God's vistas with brick mountains,
- Drown His Peace with seas of iron tumult,
- Visit the Market Place!
"The City Market Place"
is reprinted from Poet Lore, Volume XXVII, Summer 1916,
Number III. |
MORE POEMS BY EDNA WAHLERT MCCOURT |
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