Blue buildings

A poem

When Lyonel Feininger, American, painted

Blue Skyscrapers, I was three years old

crawling swiftly to eighty-three.  The country

was blue with longing for stability and peace

soon to be shattered by the Dies Committee’s

hunt for Reds and Japs. The world’s stage,

the yellow-tinted windows of the world,

steamed with black smoke. FDR limped

towards new deals, crusaded with Eleanor leading,

for neutrality. Yet it was blue, the sky,

the shade side of buildings, the mood only slightly

lifted on the teetering edge of the Empire State.

So it has happened before and will again

as we try to prance through modern times’

egregious use of irony in order to avoid

facing the truth. Oh, laugh, brother of blues.

Blow your horn in sweet notes of sorrow,

and sensate tones born to awaken even

the darkness at noon.