The City Planners Poem by Margaret Atwood

The City Planners

Rating: 3.2


Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows


give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster


when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.


That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;


guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air


tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Ashley Wright 24 January 2008

hey i thought it was a good poem.

83 132 Reply
Ashley Wright 17 January 2008

hi good day to meet you

75 121 Reply
keys 21 November 2021

OH MY GOD ASHLEY! ! ! ! !

5 3
Jamie Judith 09 September 2022

OML IS THAT U ASHLEYY! ? ! ?

3 0
jeremy winston 07 March 2023

OMG ASHLEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY IS THAT YOU! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

1 0
Tim Mason 19 October 2023

Though I thought it was a little hard on city planners, the residents make their voices too!

1 0 Reply
Tim Mason 19 October 2023

A fine poem, with Atteood's threatening imagery

1 0 Reply
John William 26 September 2022

It is a good poem which talks about how a world is doomed to fall apart and be rebuilt

3 2 Reply
ffdf 09 September 2022

dfff

2 3 Reply
no name 19 January 2022

you live in a bratclub

1 1 Reply
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