From Poems Two: "From Rome. For More Public Fountains in New York City"
Oh effervescent palisades of ferns in drippage, the air sounds green by civic watered bronze fountains in New York City. Hierarchs of spray go up and down in office: they scour the noons when hot air stinks to itself from Jersey's smoke and the city makes itself a desert of cement. Moses! Command the sun to august temperance! When water rises freely over force and poises, cleaning itself in the dirty air, it falls back on the dolphins, Poseidon, and moss-headed nymphs, clean with the dirt of air left cleansed by its clear falling, and runs down coolly with the heat to its commune, pooling. What public utility! The city that has working fountains, that lights them up at night electrically, that does not say to thirsters at its fountains: DO NOT DRINK!-- that city is well ordered in its waters and drains and dresses its corruption up in rainbows, false to the eye but how expressive of a cool truth being. The unitary water separates, novel on its heights, and falls back to its unity, discoursing. So let New York City fountains be the archives of ascent that teach the low high styles in the open air and frontage of event! Then all out subway selves could learn to fall with grace, after sparkling, and the city's life acknowledge the water of life.
courtesy of Seven Stories Press from Poems Seven by Alan Dugan copyright 2001
