Wind in the city

Do you remember Athens in its glory
 And Carthage, stranger, when it first was built?
 And all the towns the years remember-
 Troy, or a hundred not so proudly recollected?
Here is another city marked for honor,
 In storied stone another man-made world
 Granite and gleaming marble, feldspar, flint:
 Stone is the city's flesh as steel its bone;
So have we built with flesh and bone and pride,
 And out of our youth we've shaped a city's youth.
Our city, young-enough to face a sun
Whose light can find no secrets of decay;
Pillars the sky with towers find evidence
Of our supreme efficiency. The wind
Assaults our citadels and screams with rage,
A bitter wild resentment in our streets,
 Forever wailing. But we like a wind,
 Even a wind that masquerades to a bald eagle
Crying wild havoc, like the voice of time,
And prophesying dust and weeds in dust.
We like to see it test our strength and prove
 How strong we are, how strongly we have built.
 This is a wind like that which helped to scatter
 Ashes of Athens and the dust of Troy,
Or helped the Romans with their bitter sawing
 On plains of Carthage, when their seed was salt.
 When there's a wind to cry the somber warning,
 To voice the wisdom of all cities last
Too long ago, for this year's memory
We have no need to raise our voices too.
Let the mad wind grow hoarse with dark foreboding
 And leave us free to walk with heads as high
And proud and fearless as the loftiest towers
In this tall town we built just yesterday.
Danger there is- and fear and doubt and winter:
 Perhaps it is as wall that now the wind
Still challenges with omens of disaster
To spur us at our self-appointed task.
Today may be the end, today may bring
 Destruction. Watch us, wind, we keep on building
 For the future. We are not afraid.

HARRIET LUNDGAARD.