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.

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