Thursday, August 20, 2009

April 29, 2009

They're building a house at the corner of Fairview and Old Jersey,
a great and terrible house that will surely swallow up the kitsch
and courage of the crumbling Historic District.

I hope that when people pass it on their way to football games
or the ghost of the MSC, they'll refuse to admire its gabled windows
and easy wrap-around porch.

I hope instead they close their eyes and remember the first professors
who lived there, in those twisting and colorless shacks, now gone.

I hope they walk past it with a certain arrogance, knowing what the builders
do not, that their home will never be at home here, that their children
will not be family, that their mobile home money can only buy a house.

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