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Frank Marshall Davis
Here in this fat city
Men seventy-two inches short
Have frozen their dreams
Into steel and concrete
Six hundred feet tall
Thin fingers
On the hard hand
Of Chicago's loop
Are these skyscrapers
Rubbing bright sides
Of rainbow stars
Tearing the gray gauze
Of low clouds
Dipping in the sizzling pot
Of a summer sun
Passing the jeweled moon
Over my city Chicago a singer arises to sing.
I greet thee, hoarse and terrible singer, half man, half bird, strong, winged one.
I see you float in cold bleak winds,
Your wings burned by the fires of furnaces,
In all your cries so little that is beautiful,
Only the fact that you have risen out of the din and roar to float and wait and point the way to song.
Back of your grim city, singer, the long flat fields.
Corn that stands up in orderly rows, full of purpose.
As you float and wait, uttering your hoarse cries
I see new beauties in the standing corn,
And dream of singers yet to come,
When you and your rude kind, choked by the fury of your furnaces,
Have fallen dead upon this coal heap here.
I am mature, a man child, in America, in the West, in the
great valley of the Mississippi. My head arises above
the cornfields. I stand up among the new corn.
I am a child, a confused child in a confused world. There
are no clothes made that fit me. The minds of men
cannot clothe me. Great projects arise within me. I
have a brain and it is cunning and shrewd.
I want leisure to become beautiful, but there is no leisure.
Men should bathe me with prayers and with weeping,
but there are no men.
Now — from now — from to-day I shall do deeds of fiery
meaning. Songs shall arise in my throat and hurt me.
I am a little thing, a tiny little thing on the vast prairies.