There are two places most Americans will boast of
Without shame or fear of ridicule.
Both are cities: Boston and San Francisco.
Neither names's original.
Boston's precursor is a fenland village
which differs mainly in that it lacks:
orchestras, museums, muggers, strippers,
ashphalt acres, megastores,
bookshops where the famous accent,
vainly anglophilic, purrs,
Route one-two-eight and Filene's basement,
screeching subways, and a river
so unclean, that falling in
calls for a day's intensive care.
I've never been to San Francisco.
Three times I stood across the bay
in easy reach of downtown, but I didn't go.
I'd seen Boston, and doubted that this western Eden
could match the spirit of the ragged genius
from whom it took its name,
and whose notion of success finds little echo
in the minds of the New World.
The flat banality of conversation,
the minimality of the common culture,
the thin skim of the melting-pot
are what repel most Europeans from America,
but the place is far from hopeless.
Just and true and thinking men and women
are as common as anywhere else, and may be found
pulling protective wagons about them in the desolation
and calmly watching Eastward for the dawn.
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