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After the Fall

Created out of five-and-dimes,

The Woolworth sums up better times:

A Flemish Gothic 1910

Metropolis that might have been;

As, wholly 1932,

The Empire State, forever new,

Foretells a city so far seen

In drawings only, caught between

Prospectus and a backward glance

Toward Babylon. As we advance

The future takes on, more and more,

A look of follies gone before.

On every planner’s mounting zeal

Hell’s Kitchen comes to put its seal,

And where the streets of Haussmann go

Stood once the Walls of Jericho.

Above the airship mooring mast

The TV aerials broadcast,

Confirming that Count Zeppelin

Is where our Captain Kirks begin.

In fiction—pulp or subtler art—

In film, the silents at the start

And talkies after, Emerald

Or seven-gated, tightly walled

Yet welcoming, a citadel

No actuality can quell,

Our future is that city, myth

We are from childhood encumbered with.