Art News
No time now for articles in the Tribune
On building inspectors dining with builders
At midnight, in dimly-lit restaurants,
While the roof of the playhouse sags under snow.
No time for those who make us feel superior.
We want to look up now, not down.
To be reminded of our rarer purposes
By characters who escape the charge of sloth
Or greed or fear, who, if they fail,
Follow what seems their higher promptings.
The Tribune can't do justice to the aldermen
Skimping on the fire department to restore the hotel
Where Madison paused once when the roads were flooded
And tinkered with the Constitution.
When the hotel burns for want of fire equipment,
When the hotel burns for want of fire equipment,
It will take art to avoid an easy ironical style,
The art of our playhouse with its leaky roof,
Where often we've done the unlucky some justice.
Just last month we mourned the fate of Antigone.
Out on the street she'd seem graceless, rude,
Uncivil, a woman who never questioned her feelings,
Too certain that gods were on her side.
On stage we liked the way she looked past us,
Her gaze fixed, unblinking on the eyes of Creon.
We admired her stubborn refusal to back down.
We don't want to read an article writing her off
As someone who goes out looking for trouble.
We want to watch how trouble comes looking for her
From far away, with a single mission.
We want to see it approaching as soon as she does
And choose not to fall back as we might outside
But to stay on stage with the chorus.
May it please her to hear us sing her praises.
May it please her to hear us bewail her fate
As Creon's soldiers lead her away.
Found In Volume 21, No. 05
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