A Poem : "Columbia is old town, lost town; shabby town, bad town. Once, very long ago, it was a wonder of a city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic building with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows and spindle turrets. They are all asylum houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and vomit stained, and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and cheap varnish laid on over generations of filth. In the tall rooms, haggard denziens bicker with shifty ghosts. On the wide front porches, living corpses reach their cracked shoes into the sun, staring at nothing. Thus sit the old men with faces like lost battle."