“The Damnedest Finest Ruins”
A poem by Laurence Harris, 1906
Put me somewhere west of East Street, where there’s nothing left but dust,
And the boys are all a-hustling and everything’s gone bust;
Where all the buildings standing there sort o’ blink and blindly stare
At the damndest finest ruins ever gazed on anywhere!
Bully ruins, brick and wall, through the night I’ve heard you call,
Sort o’ sorry for each other, cause you had to burn and fall;
From the Ferry to Van Ness you’re a God-forsaken mess,
But the damndest finest ruins, nothing more and nothing less.
And the Rubes they come a-rubbering, and a-hunting souvenirs,
And the fools they try to tell us it’ll take a hundred years
Before we’ve even started and why don’t we come and live
And build our homes in Oakland on the land they’ve got to give?
Got to give! Why, on my soul, I would rather bore a hole
And live right in the ashes than to be an Oakland mole;
And if they’d give the pick of their buildings fine and slick,
In the damndest finest ruins, I would rather be a brick
(Courtesy of Melissa Geissinger on Facebook.com)
