The Glory of Cities.

• Author: Ostriker, Alicia
• Position: Poem

The Glory of Cities Let us now praise famous cities, our human fists against heaven, let us praise their devotion to wealth and power and art, goals toward which we swim ferociously upstream, tearing ourselves apart, to lay our eggs and die along with swarms and herds of our brothers and sisters, let me especially praise the cities of the Northeast Corridor from Boston to the District of Columbia, birth-lips of trade and industry, thumbs of unbeatable deals, their mayors and their mistresses, their Chinese and Korean neighborhoods their Pakistani taxis, their Afro-American subway systems igniting their steel drum arpeggios, moonwalks, laden shopping bags, all superb for staring at people while sinking into invisibility. Oh divine hot women, cool men, highschool anarchists, weary waitresses and nurses, hardhats off-shift, I follow underground boots to...