Metropolis Poem by Matthew Buchwald

Why is it that the thing which we hate
is also the cause of our happiness?
The instinct which inspired my hatred
of the city, now brings me joy.

When I used to wander the waterfront
looking upon the ruined docks across the canal,
and upon the black oily water before me,
and saw everything natural poisoned and decaying;
the filthy earth covered with shattered flotsam and weeds;
the streets of the borough beyond
in all their numbing sameness,
ringed in by the ugliest of houses;
and the knotted highway traffic inching along
under a noxious pall, tainting both cloud and sky —
when I recoiled from the streets about me,
cacophonous with the clamor of industrial noise,
and saw the thousand swarms of wretched humans
creeping home in the dingy twilight of the day,
whose darkening shadows summoned forth
skulking villains from their sour hovels,
while the nervous hustling of bodies
called my attention to the seething taverns,
where I saw counterfeit coyness yielding to greasy lust,
and the sidewalk mob jostled and taunted me,
all this showed me the implacable menace which permeates a city,
and filled my heart with revulsion and dread.
I felt myself ashamed, swept along
by this overflowing vulgarity
to a closer acquaintance with Evil,
and the manifold ills of a malignant hive
oppressed all my senses.
Stupendous ratholes surrounded me,
fleshly sewers yawned at my feet,
and riotous disorder engulfed me;
insidious caravans roamed over the land,
and spite and insolence resounded from afar.
In the caverns of the subways I saw inexorable malice
in motion, multiplying itself endlessly;
while at the street level, and inside the terminals,
there teemed one million varieties of vicious predator.
Everything around was rotten
with an incalculable amount of disease;
while nature fled for its life to the wilds,
from the safety of which it pitiably cried out
against the spreading cancer. Brave rebel!
in whose righteous heart every outrage is a crime.
From the impassible ghettos, across the center of the city
where no natural creature ever goes,
as far as the suburbs of the vast outskirts,
breathe the sulfurous fumes of a fallen angel;
and every iota of his vile creation
is pleasing to his tainted eye.
How frequently has the noise of an airplane, roaring over my head,
made me want to suddenly take off for distant places,
there to escape the misery of a living death,
and to shake off, if only for a brief while,
with the restoring power of nature,
the malignity of that demon who measures all things by himself,
and remakes creation in his evil image!

How does this bring me joy?
Because I have fallen in love,
here in the midst of all this corruption.
Because of you, dear friend,
this tale of suffering uplifts me.
Even the burden of remembering torment,
and putting it into words, is a reason to rejoice,
as it brings me closer to you,
and makes me feel the more
the intensity of my present delight!