You can tell the health of a society
By looking at its buildings. Buildings
Are living sculptures where people eat,
Live and work, and even try to play.
So: look at an ancient greek temple,
For instance. At the ripe rising broccoli-sprouts
Of its columns, at the delicate whimsical stone fluting,
The faux-twining-ivy-leaf shapes in the stone.
The play of sunlight upon the shaded places.

So: Look (in your mind) (for these structures are gone)
At the Indian wigwam far up pacific northwest,
The Egyptian peasant mud-hut colored pigbelly-pink-orange
In the sun,

The sod-covered hut of Northumbrian farmer,
Sweet soft gray moss
Growing on the stones.

Look: at american typical office building,
The slatted, constipated glass-and-steel uniformity,
The profound lack of delicacy, whimsy or imaginative fabric --
The blunt brutal geometry, repetition of boring units --
Gray steel and glass, or vulgar greenish all-glass building,
No broccoli-like columns,
No funny ivy-leaf carven stones,
No faces of goddess,
No ancient gray moss growing on gray stone --

Absorb the full
Effect of the american downtown skyline -- hey I got an idea --
How bout the american typical subdivision?
Yeah let�s look at that.
Notice
The fake vinyl things next to the windows,
Supposed to be �colonial� sense of certainty --
The banal �respectability� of the fa�ade;
Look closely at the vinyl siding:
Its wood grain ! A fake wood grain pattern.
Yes. Why not look at the

Workers too? A few
Underpaid Mexicans in wet blue jeans --
The healthiest thing here.
Praise to the slaves.
Praise to the slaves, the human beings
With their broccoli-like legs,
The whimsical ivy-coiling
Of their hair.



�2005 by Jack Anders