WATERFALLS OF STONE
By:
August 4, 2024
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
Buildings are waterfalls of stone
That, spurting up with marble crest,
Are frozen and enchained in air,
Poised in perpetual rest.
But water seeks its level out.
So, when these fountains are unbound,
The cataracts of melting stone
Will sink into the ground.
— Another apocalyptic poem from Allen Ginsberg’s father. I encountered this poem in Poems for a Machine Age (1941, selected and edited by Horace J. McNeil of Brooklyn Technical High School). It was first published, as far as I can tell, in The Liberator (June 1923).
The Liberator was published monthly from 1918, first established by Max Eastman and his sister Crystal Eastman continuing The Masses, was shut down by the US Government during World War One.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.