My kinship lies

Not with the shining valleys nor yet the mountain ranges

Where man, heroic, stands alone

The world before him in glory

Mine are the beaten hills

Rough as the boxer’s crown.

Take away your gleaming cities of neon

Stainless steel in the sun;

For mine are the cities

Fallen from their strength

Children of iron, black as coal on the snow

In my cities, living still,

Are the descendants of

That fighting Irish Italian breed

Crossed with the Yankee farmer.

Murphy’s Bar, Vinnie’s Pizza

Haunted by Ethan Frome

Who on his good days turns into Robert Frost

But no apologies.

Mine the farms where the fields have vanished

Ghosts of a dream betrayed by the dreamer

The white church on the hill

The weathered farm, ox and ass

The red mill by the river

And all fallen to the ruin

But enduring still.