[Originally published on April 9, 2016]
We had then (still) tomorrow, Saarinen,
a Trans-World tapered, curled, stiletto heeled,
and Kahn. We thought we’d live without a Penn
Station (what a leveled playing field).
The wood was different, rosaries rehearsed
on lips of pews, long sills collecting faces,
waiting rooms of liturgy traversed
in kneeling-rising time-relenting spaces.
We don’t go in for firmaments these days,
accustomed to hair-raising emptiness,
and Gehry, pundits piling-on to praise
the new. (The optimism we finesse.)
The pews are polished, marble pavements rinsed,
but could an Eliot be, today, convinced?
| Copyright © 2017 by Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena. He is the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line. |  |
Perhaps no other of master poet Eric Meub's works sends us so often scurrying to our encyclopedias, our art histories, our literary glossaries as this poem, redolent of the names of architects most of us have mostly forgotten. Thank you, Eric, for re-educating us; our art history classes were so very long ago!
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