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Do the Quakers. . .
Do the Quakers, Mrs. Dixon asked,
Ever sneak a little one?
(She meant a nap.)
I said the spirit is unwilling
But the flesh is sometimes weak
And smiled.
She laughed.
John Oliver
aster Prayer
The twelve story orance crane arms
pull the tan and vhlte, brick and mortar
tweed faster dress over the concrete and steel body
of the new 17th and Market Streets office building
which lifts its many eyes to god in his blue heaven
though never once looking down on the ere en okay bottle
being strangled by the sleeping man on his gutter mattress
whose hand encircles its cold, dead neck.
And they saw the building and it was good.
And it was morning and evening of the eighth day.
But then men rested.
They didn"t take the city by the hand,
walfi-it to the bath-tub river
and give it a silver sail boat to play with
taking the soap and green park washcloth
and scrubbing the- filthy slums from behind his ears
so it would be clean for the Easter parade.
This is the city
of brotherly love.
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They love their brothers,
but they do not call all men their brothers.
And they say this with two cast iron faces
as straight as the new Industrial power house chimney
which like the cigarette in my mouth
sends its smoke curling upwards
to add to the smog which chokes me
and prevents god from seeing the human condition
and passing welfare legislation.
He died for our ironic salvation
on the stainless steel crossthe antenna of the new nuclear armed space satellite.
We, with outstretched and clutching hands,
grope for pieces of dirty green crumpled xsxiteK paper
which unlike chlorophyll do not sweeten the breath of mankind,
SWAKTHMOREAHK
And we hard-boil and color that once vital eggthe Christian ethlcand give it to our children to play with
on Easter morning*
Stanley Rosenberg
