EARTHWORKS
2010; Wiley; Volume: 98; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tyr.2010.0024
ISSN1467-9736
Autores Tópico(s)American Environmental and Regional History
Resumo6 5 R E A R T H W O R K S R O S A N N A W A R R E N f o r F r e d e r i c k L a w O l m s t e d I. Shadows ‘‘The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.’’ – Emerson, ‘‘Circles’’ Against icy morning light the sycamores flex biceps, shrug shoulders, flaunt broad arms, serpent-mottled Hurrah they shout or Help or Pour down more sun Disease bunches up in boles under the skin and cranks the elbow Malady we were taught is picturesque ‘‘Hollow trunk, dead arm, drooping bough’’ wrote Mr. Gilpin, ‘‘splendid remnants of decaying grandeur’’ And other mischiefs incident to trees They fling their shadows wide as archaic pitchforks, prong frozen soil to dislodge five million ghostly cubic yards of stone, earth, topsoil hauled to make a park The Park The Central Park The central idea that all – ward-heelers, dandies, urchins, freed slaves, desperadoes, gents and ladies, the halt, the swift, the lame – might come, might be drawn forth in courtesy, might 6 6 W A R R E N Y harmonize Democracy is space in which we flow The shadows strike back to the house in Hartford, curtains drawn in daylight around the mother sunk in quilts, no longer breathing in the laudanum gloom and the small boy hardly breathing by the bed Roots boil up in dragon coils from rock-hard earth Elm, Norway maple, pin oak, honey locust, hickory clutch and bunch secrets wrenched from below where the mother lies in metamorphic dark Bedrock mica schist at the core, littered above with clay and gravel, gouged by glacier, shot with granite dikes where magma probes and cooled ‘‘No account kept of expenses from February 24 to March 12’’ wrote Father the merchant ‘‘Tuesday February 28 at one half past five p.m. my dear wife died’’ And next April – ‘‘Married, $10.00’’ The shadows press child after child into the shale pages of the Book of Earth Charlotte measles, aged four Owen aged two Ada aged six of bilious colic ‘‘Her moans and cries have been heartrending’’ writes young Fred Anthologist of shadows ‘‘The great principle of art, breadth of light and shadow’’ counsels Sir Uvedale Price for whom the eye should not be ‘‘stopt and harassed by little disunited, discordant parts’’ Nor is Democracy little discordant parts Rhododendron, azalea, rhodora, sweetgum, spice bush, green ash, cucumber magnolia, Siberian elm ‘‘The essence’’ says Price ‘‘is connection’’ Olmsted and Vaux loop tableland and meadow, hill, hollow, rock, E A R T H W O R K S 6 7 R reservoir, lake and brook, East-West, North-South, above, below in paths, roads, drives, and bridges cresting Build in solidest granite that the span may loft across the death of brother John, ghost-writer, confidante, comrade, closest soul choked by tuberculosis far in southern France ‘‘Dear, dear Fred It appears we are not to see one another any more I am wild with opium I cannot comprehend this suddenness – but I see it I have no breath Don’t let Mary su√er while you are alive’’ Price: ‘‘Twilight connects what was before scattered; it fills up staring meagre vacancies; it destroys edginess; and by shadow as well as light to water it increases its brilliance and softness’’ Evening dissolves opal and mother of pearl across the reservoir Silences commissioners, bosses, o≈ce-seekers, first citizens, journalists, bankers Small waves lisp and suck at the rim of blue ice The wigeon trucks an emerald cheek under his wing and drifts toward sleep as shade encumbers the elms 6 8 W A R R E N Y II. Slaughter ‘‘Nothing is so fleeting as form; yet never does it quite deny itself.’’ – Emerson ‘‘History’’ Where mud loosens from the clench of frost on raggedy slopes, where willows blur in a fever of buds, where phoebes skim to mud-clot nests on the joists of Bow Bridge shanties yawed Pig pens Slaughterhouses Boneboiling sheds O√al sank in the bog Blood bubbled ‘‘Hawkin led me through vile sloughs in the black and unctuous slime...
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