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."