And They Obey
Smash down the cities.
Knock the walls to pieces.
Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses
and homes
Into loose piles of stone and lumber and black
burnt wood:
You are the soldiers and we command you.
Build up the cities.
Set up the walls again.
Put together once more the factories and cathedrals,
warehouses and homes
Into buildings for life and labor:
You are workmen and citizens all: We
command you.
poem by Carl Sandburg
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Walls
Walls of stone and walls of brick,
Some walls thin and some walls thick,
Walls so high and walls so low,
Walls to hide and walls to show.
Walls quite short and walls quite tall,
Some walls, last well, some walls fall,
Walls for comfort, walls of hate,
Walls for security, walls ornate.
Some as a barricade, some to support,
Walls of wood and walls of iron wrought,
Walls as a barrier, walls to enclose,
Some are to sit on, some to lean and doze.
Walls we build ourselves, these aren't good,
Walls for privacy, walls that have stood,
So many years through weather foul or fine,
Walls, that are yours, walls that are mine.
Brick by brick they are built to last,
Whether built now or in the past,
They shelter us from so many things,
And shield us from whatever this life brings.
poem by Ernestine Northover
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Cities
(Justin Hayward)
Neon the city's sun
Taxis like beetles run, and I see
Pavements with yellow lines
Grey walls and big bold signs with darkness
Up above, all around
In the sky, on the ground
This is what, I have found
Cities, cities
Here the flowers don't grow
Here the river's just a sewer
People who move below
Buildings with smells and noise and darkness
Up above, all around
In the sky, on the ground
This is what, I have found
Cities, cities
Not for me
No, no I don't believe you
It's not the place to be
No, no I won't believe you
Here the flowers don't grow
Here the river's just a sewer
People who move below
Buildings with smells and noise and darkness
Up above, all around
In the sky, on the ground
This is what I have found
Cities, cities, cities
*************************************************************
song performed by by Moody Blues
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.
quote by Janet Frame
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Structure of Design
Structure of Design
In order to avert
The impending evisceration
I envision
On the cusp
Of the horizon,
I construct cathedrals
And cities
Beside a white beach,
Beside a diamond sea
Glinting in the
Splinted light trails of the sun.
I build what does not exist—
What cannot exist—
To find a shelter from the
Intrusion and imposition
Of invasive thoughts
Or deeply buried
Forgeries of the mind.
I dis_ solve my_ self into:
The absolute basic
Con_cept of my_self,
I must raise walls
To
Twist
My sub_ Con_ scious—
To complicate my
Navigation
o f i t—
And then let them falls
By the ways in which
I lose myself
To be found again.
poem by Tim Stensloff
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Absence
I speak to you across cities
I speak to you across plains
My mouth is upon your pillow
Both faces of the walls come meeting
My voice discovering you
I speak to you of eternity
O cities memories of cities
Cities wrapped in our desires
Cities come early cities come lately
Cities strong and cities secret
Plundered of their master's builders
All their thinkers all their ghosts
Fields pattern of emerald
Bright living surviving
The harvest of the sky over our earth
Feeds my voice I dream and weep
I laugh and dream among the flames
Among the clusters of the sun
And over my body your body spreads
The sheet of it's bright mirror.
poem by Paul Eluard
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Cities may now bulldoze private citizens' homes, farms and small businesses to make way for shopping malls or other developments.
quote by Bob Goodlatte
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Towns and cities throughout the United States have opened their hearts and homes to thousands of families displaced from their homes as a result of this horrific storm.
Absence
I speak to you over cities
I speak to you over plains
My mouth is against your ear
The two sides of the walls face
my voice which acknowledges you.
I speak to you of eternity.
O cities memories of cities
cities draped with our desires
cities early and late
cities strong cities intimate
stripped of all their makers
their thinkers their phantoms
Landscape ruled by emerald
live living ever-living
the wheat of the sky on our earth
nourishes my voice I dream and cry
I laugh and dream between the flames
between the clusters of sunlight
And over my body your body extends
the layer of its clear mirror.
poem by Paul Eluard
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
If you take all the factories in the world today, they could make all the parts necessary to build more factories like themselves. So, in a sense, we have a self-replicating industrial system today, but it would take a tremendous effort to copy what we already have.
quote by K. Eric Drexler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don't have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks.
quote by Jimmy Buffett
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.
quote by Sinclair Lewis
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Cities Of White Men
Those men build many houses:
They dig the earth, and they build;
They cut down the trees, and they build;
They work always - building.
From the elevation of the mountainside
I behold the clouds:
The clouds build many beautiful houses in the sky:
They build, and they tear down;
They build, and they dissolve. . . .
The cities of white men,
They are not beautiful like the cloud cities;
They are not vast, like the cloud cities. . . .
A wind-swept teepee
Is all the house I own. . .
poem by Anonymous Americas
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
These City Walls
There's no doubt this city's in abundance
There's beauty alright, too much to see sometimes
The summer varnishes stone buildings like they were a canvas
The rivers reflect the scenes, doubling the impact
And the people here are smart and easy
No trouble, no smashing glass or arses out of car windows
Of course; they keep the best stuff locked away
If you weren't born to money or vast ambition
Then you've not earned the right to see some joys
Then you're not blessed enough to come inside the walls
These city walls, secrets within arms-reach
Exploding summer gardens, ponds, boats, buildings
Dining halls, drawing rooms, ancient chapples
Wrapped a hundred walls around it all
Reserved for the elite, for the wealthy and the 'wise'
Still this city holds me in her talons tight
Still this place cushions me in its soft paw
Strips a few garments here and there
To keep me aware of all the beauty bubbling under
But now my times are tainted
Now too many feelings have boiled away
When I go to other cities
They fire my imagination
They inspire me with their possibility
Oh, the excitement of not knowing
Where this street will take me
Oh, the happiness in lost moments
Just swimming through confusion
It's time to go beyond these city walls
It's time to move on
From these city walls...
(2009)
poem by B. Alexander
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Illiteracy
some homes breed love
some homes breed hatred
some homes breed moderation
some homes breed extremes
some homes breed worldliness
some homes breed racism
some homes breed kindness
somehomes breed religious bigotry
throw in illiteracy and any country would be bloom to bits
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.
quote by George Orwell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Equality... (In A Word)
equality...
in a word,
no more talk of
the 'land of the free'.
you founded this country
over the scattered bones
of 100,000,000 Native Americans.
built this country
on the backs of
African-American slaves,
and poor Scotch-Irish refugees,
who turned your earth,
and built your homes.
'give me your tired, your poor...'
more cheap labor?
to build your cities,
your railroads, work your steel.
how many faceless bodies buried
in your cold dark mines?
how many second class young men
sent off to war?
how many women paid less,
treated as less?
how many farmworker immigrants
paid too little,
treated like trash?
how many slum children
sent off to prison?
how many lives sold off
for bottom line profit?
disembodied jobless,
driven from their homes?
how many minimum wage slaves
praying for food stamps?
how many 'cant afford an education'
futures written in stone?
how many sparrows on the fence?
you want to honor those who've served?
all of these,
the people who have served you!
who have met your needs!
Memorial Day, an epitaph!
poem by Eric Cockrell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days
AS I walk these broad, majestic days of peace,
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish'd, wherein, O terrific
Ideal!
Against vast odds, having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on--yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others;
--As I walk solitary, unattended,
Around me I hear that eclat of the world--politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things--science,
The approved growth of cities, and the spread of inventions. 10
I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories, with their foremen and workmen,
And here the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.
But I too announce solid things;
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing--I watch
them,
Like a grand procession, to music of distant bugles, pouring,
triumphantly moving--and grander heaving in sight;
They stand for realities--all is as it should be.
Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad, and the divine average--Freedom to every slave on the face
of the earth, 20
The rapt promises and luminé of seers--the spiritual world--these
centuries lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements
of any.
For we support all, fuse all,
After the rest is done and gone, we remain;
There is no final reliance but upon us;
Democracy rests finally upon us (I, my brethren, begin it,)
And our visions sweep through eternity.
poem by Walt Whitman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Break Down The Walls
I used to think that labels were just symbols of pride
but over time I've seen they only served to divide
It's so easy to judge people by the way them seem to be
We must overcome this problem to live life peacefully
Break Down The walls!
yes,we'll break down the walls
look beyond the fashion or the crowd that they are in
look beyond their riches or the color of their skin
look beyond appearance and the truth you will find
look for what's inside before you make up your mind
break Down The walls
yes, we'll break down the walls
song performed by by Youth Of Today
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Red, White, and Blue
brown and black,
red, and white...
old and young,
male and female.
tired and poor,
pushed too far!
too honest for
our own good...
small towns, big cities,
farms and factories...
hands that work
joined together...
we are a people
that believe in people...
the faces of freedom,
and we have names!
red, white, and blue!
poem by Eric Cockrell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
And, of course, millions of us cross the border to work in US homes and gardens and factories and carpentry shops and restaurants, and if you go to a restaurant pretty much anywhere in the United States, the chances are that the dishes will be washed by a Mexican.
quote by Alma Guillermoprieto
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!