Above the City
You know our office on the 18th
floor of the Salmon Tower looks
right out on the
Empire State and it just happened
we were there finishing up some
late invoices on
a new book that Saturday morning
when a bomber roared through the
mist and crashed
flames poured from the windows
into the drifting clouds and sirens
screamed down in
the streets below it was unearthly
but you know the strangest thing
we realized that
none of us were much surprised be-
cause we'd always known that those
two paragons of
progress sooner or later would per-
form before our eyes this demon-
stration of their
true relationship.
Copyright Credit: James Laughlin,“Above the City,” from Poems New and Selected. Copyright 1938, 1945, © 1959, 1965, 1969, 1970, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996 by James Laughlin. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: Poems New and Selected (1998)