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Persistence of Ancestors
The Nineteenth Century is not yet over Here in Buffalo, at Forest Lawn; A weeping, waning landscape seems to mirror All of the treacheries of slow decline That stop at nightfall: in the luny dark This city of the dead amusement park Still holds its own against the funeral Parlors, and the car lot's tacky smear Of yellow neon, making its hard sell- The Nineteenth Century won't disappear: It bides its time, waiting out the age, Each Robber Baron in his gilded cage . . . Red Jacket's graven prophecy still stands Above the famous statue of the Chief: "When I am gone and my warnings are no longer heeded, The craft and avarice of the white man will prevail. My heart fails me when I think of my people So soon to be scattered and forgotten." - Almost too depressing now to bear, The gross conjunction of vulgarity And opulence, the Makers planted here- Art as the servant of Gentility, The Bride of Commerce. Old Red Jacket waits. The dead are gathered by the massy gates Stolen from Europe, opening on Main Street's traffic pouring in an endless flood Past Williams' paints, whose emblematic stain Drips from the Arctic like a flow of blood, Or like a great red tongue, ambiguously curled Above its motto, "Covering The World."