Silos Like martial swans in spring paraded against the city sky's shabby blue, they were always too white and suddenly there. They were never fingers, never xylophones, although once a stranger said they put him in mind of Pan's pipes and all the lost songs of Greece. But to the townspeople they were like cigarettes, the smell chewy and bitter like a field shorn of milkweed, or beer brewing, or a fingernail scorched over a flame. No, no, exclaimed the children. They're a fresh packet of chalk, dreading math work. They were masculine toys. They were tall wishes. They were the ribs of the modern world. Rita Dove