“Whatever can come to a city can come to this city.
Under the tall compulsion
of the past
I see the city
change like a man changing
I love this man
with my lifelong body of love
I know you
among your changes
wherever I go
Hearing the sounds of building
the syllables of wrecking
A young girl watching
the man throwing red hot rivets
Coals in a bucket of change
How can you love a city that will not stay?”
— from the epic poem Waterlily Fire, by Muriel Rukeyser