The City of Irony floats above the pavement;
Oppression is perfected and requires no repair;
Dwellers are uninterested, inhabitants patient
Who wander in intangibles, unhungering, unsated;
Here no foundations are or ever created
Except as drifts, except as gestures and air.
Writers visited the City of Irony
And squatted in their dignity with squatters over pits,
And peered fastidious in their finery
At old urbanity and decomposing wits.
Archaeologists camp in the City of Irony
And hunch indigenous with indigents by ashes —
Burnt roots of words, their bleak environry,
The aftermath of glamour in a wind that lashes
Allusive walls enmeshed in fruitless vinery.
Squatter – A play on two meanings: 1) someone who illegally occupies an empty apartment or house; and 2) someone who sits on his haunches low to the ground.
Environry – (Pronounced en-VĪ-ron-ree) A rare old word meaning “environment.”
“True art is not ironic. It is sincere and restrained.”
Georgy Adamovich, émigré critic, 1923