Los Angeles (Part 2)

From "Worldwheel" by Rudolph

LOS ANGELES

I sing Los Angeles, middling bright,
Freaked with borrowing left and right -
Glazed novelties – a hybrid site,
Incongruous as all else,
Ignored by the sea, which she likewise ignores,
Shielding her center from its shores,
Weaving her web apart from the surf
And the petulant gull, resolved as no serf
Of littoral wave in marine maze
To figure, but swathed in her urban haze,
Ground-queen to remain, pawn of no tide,
But prone to impromptu slide.

Insouciant City, sprawling slack,
With boulevards of bric-a-brac
And juxtaposed, short-lived boutiques
Whose iridescent bloom bespeaks
A traffic which their books belie –
With blared shortcomings, you possess
An uninhibited largesse
Unique throughout the globe, a span
Which harbors all resorts of Man,
A generous, untutored scope
Engendering fresh health and hope,
Absence of ingrained restraint
Which though it begs the noxious taint
Precludes no countervailing tint.
If not full bounty, bounteous hint.

Your inexplicit format breeds
A plethora of willful weeds,
Yet fosters equal spate of green,
Which contrast makes for rounded scene.
On days too numerous, alas,
You stint your blue-starved populace,
Torpor drapes its flaccid shawl
Around your corpus under pall.
But you accentuate those days
With sparkling opposites ablaze,
Redeem the maculate with one
Immaculately shining sun.
Indeed you cater to the gross,
The loose, the lewd, hovering close
Above swart pits – then reverse
The medal and reveal the curse
Lifting, doom deferred, the goal
Divulged toward which your higher soul
Is striving and will duly reach,
Aligned with combers on your beach

Will you precede the world, so doing,
Lead the host likewise pursuing
Eldorados evanescent
Through the welter, ever-crescent,
Of incorrigible streams?
Will you be first to crown you dreams –
Our dreams – first mason to emplace
The cornerstone and future brace
Of that appointed edifice,
Ascendant over artifice,
Wherein Man’s woeful heart, reprieved,
Recalled to what it first believed,
Perhaps, in primal wilderness,
Where in the half-light, fathomless,
But prodigal of deep things lost,
Full trust may suddenly have crossed
His placid, unenquiring ken
And dowered him as never since again
With inward glory and repose,
On which thereafter all suns rose –
Or else in cities lost to us,
Ineffably harmonious,
Through whose clear-woven structure flowed
The sense of God to Whom was owed
Exulting heart, exploring mind,
Exalted spirit, star-entwined,
From Whom fell not remorse or fear
Or doubt upon the laughing sphere,
And all was clear, immutable,
Eternal, irrefutable?

The errant world bids you proceed,
Borne onward by your myriad breed
Inscrutably, with varied stride,
To destinations undescried
But palpable; bids you unfold
Your latencies, and where you strolled
Before, endeavor now to stride,
Heedless of time and toiling tide,
Unrolling your huge tapestry,
Prefiguring, for all to see
And emulate – with, here and there,
Interpolations yet more fair,
More pensive polishing to come –
Terrestrial Elysium.