Alan Bramhall's Brockton Poems--

Natural History Museum of Brockton 4/30/00


the elaboration constitutes a township. let all exult now in the music, and the greening trees. today is a goose heading to that wet patch. slack sunlight washes any city like Brockton, Massachusetts, gladdened enhancement. the communal urge fires up a truculent vacuity familiar to all jaded eyes. hearken to that or the tea kettle a-boil. the favoured enclose their destitutions in glossy rites. they magnify their delirium with queenly justice and a dollop of sweet cream in their tea. this hums with Brockton's tone. a flicker of honey sweetens the tea and the day pauses in its grandiose stretch across the imaginable heavens to let the tea's airy fragrance trim some clutter from the doorway. take hold of the idea that a gust will be yours. take that picture now. you can walk the streets of Brockton, collapse in sidewalk reverie. the beamish sun resists interpretation but look how the ransacked factories take on new life. the country has a heavenly possibility. that's not so bad as it sounds. the framework renders activity into boundless energy, you see. that Blakean truth works its magic on Brockton's own. the language dips its beak into the mild rostrum of invigourated politics. the people speak, or move above the town. and the town, too, moves about. and the country moves, and the continent does, and the planet finds extremity as just one more dance. and all this adds up to a talked-about grace. discussion fills the boat with longing and excitement. island astonishment lives on. Brockton is home.