Louis Sullivan, by Timothy Sandefur​

Bayard-Condict Building (1899) in New York City, designed by Louis Sullivan, photo by Joel Seligmann, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Louis Sullivan

“The fairy delicacy, ceaselessly at work.” 
The Autobiography of an Idea, Louis H. Sullivan

I say there’s something living in this common earth,
Latent, not free before to manifest in flesh,
Only to reach toward heaven, not sky;
I say at last let us let it be true.

Now come immense and peaceful migrations;
Thundering engines of steel and steam;
Instant electric signals;
A new kind of light.
Let ancient fathers remain at their rest;
In this new world, even the stars are new.

Seeking with all of their youthful pride,
Born in the breadth of the Mississippi River,
The redwoods that tower above the Pacific,
The thousand-mile horizons over the prairies,
Unpent mankind begins to bend back
All the massed superstitions.

Can will command nature? I say will is nature.
As the tree in the seed, so are we liberated.

A bridge leaps the gap, knit from steel tendrils;
Stones once defiant yield at last,
And summon new angels who,
Stretching their wings,
Form a canopy like boughs shielding the garden
Where a gentler force unfurls:
Vitality groping toward its fate,
Enfolding its frame in a million faceted intricate blossoms;
A lace of vines and fractal structures, glittering effulgences;
The asymmetric, incalculable, wild marvel of ensoulment.

I say new bones, new life.  Yes,
Emerging like Eve from Adam’s rib of iron,
From starbursts and diamonds and oak leaves,
Spinning atoms’ forces and the
Feminine swells that bring new creation;
Gravity now is balanced on lightness;
Great masses expertly poised upon pinpoints;
Arches throwing their compass feet forward,
Toward a tomorrow certain to be.

Let me show you the golden doorway.
Step through,
Step through.

Timothy Sandefur​
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Timothy Sandefur​: "I'm an attorney and author located in Phoenix, Arizona. I've published several books, including my first book of poems, Some Notes on the Silence, which came out this past spring, from Kelsay Books. My poem "New York City Haiku" appeared in The Ekphrastic Review this past summer."