by Toby Evanitsky
Always when I enter this old district
Hemmed in and darkened by towers
With streets narrow as New Amsterdam
That sensation of omnipotent powers
Everywhere metal barricades thickening
Like castle defenses until on Broadway
Trees and music implanted in this place
Of hard glances and eyes that look away
Yet Occupy Wall Street is not a festival its
Casual intensity like my occupancy of Yale
All those years ago (yes that was mayhem)
And here too a real sense of danger and jail
With the gloomy fears of the 1% hovering above
This capsule of freedom circled by plutocracy
Looks now more like an ancient Athenian
Forum a vision of the womb of democracy
As the winds of change struggle to unmask
An epidemic of greed these folks also sense
That inside each of them a paradox is at work
Offering ultimate freedom in the present tense
Worldwide are the fallen and the trampled
Where the convenient ruse is always paternal -
Who speaks in their name who shines light
Into dark places where night is eternal?
Toby Evanitsky is an architect, educated at Pratt Institute, who has practiced in New York, Maine and the Carolinas where he now resides. He has been published in Iodine Poetry Journal. Toby’s poetry has been particularly influenced by Joseph Brodsky and by Owen Barfield's Poetic Diction.
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