Does anyone recall the title and author of a sad poem about a wooded lot being ploughed over by construction machines? The author wrote this as a first person narrative describing his/her sad feelings about the cost of progress, lamenting the loss of natural beauty, a children's playspace of trees. One passage of this poem went like this.. All morning/day, the bulldozers/machines charged the tree line. I saw the shadows of children playing amongst the trees.I suspect this had to be a fairly modern American poet, given the theme of bulldozers ploughing land for housing.Thanks Does this ring any bells?
The poem is called &The war against the trees& by Stanley Kunitz...here it is: The man who sold his lawn to standard oil Joked with his neighbors come to watch the show While the bulldozers, drunk with gasoline, Tested the virtue of the soil Under the branchy sky By overthowing first the privet-row. Forsythia-forays and hydrangea-raids Were but preliminaries to a war Against the great-grandfathers of the town, So freshly lopped and maimed. They struck and struck again, And with each elm a century went down. All day the hireling engines charged the trees, Subverting them by hacking underground In grub-dominions, where dark summer's mole Rampages through his halls, Till a northern seizure shook Those crowns, forcing the giants to their knees. I saw the ghosts of children at their games Racing beyond their childhood in the shade, And while the green world turned its death-foxed page And a red wagon wheeled, I watched them disappear Into the suburbs of their grievous age. Ripped from the craters much too big for hearts The club-roots bared their amputated coils, Raw gorgons matted blind, whose pocks and scars Cried Moon! On a corner lot One witness-moment, caught In the rear-view mirrors of the passing cars.
