City Lines** (The Cranes No.9) Poem by Neil Young

We, the austere gothic, neo-classic,
Dominate in silence, amid the loud
Preoccupied, distracting crowds.
Hoping someone hears us,
We find our voice in other ways,
Through long forgotten symbols,
The details of our decorated past.
We stand here with our time-lapsed eyes,
Watching them obsessed with their consumerism

Our city fathers built us from
The profit and the blood of slaves.
Is our dark history despised?
Now private meetings drag us down;
Not by conscience pricked by such oppression,
But by the covert change of money.
Why not leave us like memorials to war
So they remember these atrocities?
The city moves too fast for us.

The shunting trains are always leaving, coming, leaving.
They scream with their arrival
And sadly whimper as they go,
Around us, ever changing, with crane-like batons,
Architects conduct a new symphonic voice.
Mock mediaeval turns to mediocre;
Substantial stone to boredom.
They scream with their arrival.
We grumble as we fall.