Chapultepec Park is a fashion of Versailles.
Mexico City, seen by an aztec eye,
Would be a chimera, only geographically grafted
Upon the solid past, unstably if stolidly draughted —
Otherwise as off the map as a ring of Saturn,
If not more so, in its incongruous pattern.
Similarly a flight of Fokkers, Vickers and Spads
Would have looked caddish (built for us wingless cads)
To a frigate-bird above Columbus' poop,
Or one shadowing Pizarro's pirate sloop
Off Tumbez, hurrying to investigate
The Inca's prodigality of plate.
These are the Time King's doings. The Time God's —
For king's no adequate title! He replots
With an itch for a silly novelty you may say
All the bricks and mortar that should come his way —
With his odd geometries, from the saxon field
To the american city, beblocked, beglassed, besteeled.
A sort of scratching upon an obsidian block
No more, a mixing of this and of that stock,
All of which he never could have invented —
He's a mixer and shaker at most — he's only rented
A ball of stone on which to scratch his patterns,
And six big ponds upon whose fish he battens —
And an excellent " shooting" in some thick patches of forest —
And set himself up as Butcher, Graver and Florist!