| |
|
I
The
winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in
passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of
smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy
scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And
newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On
broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of
the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The
morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells
of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all
its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy
shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your
back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night
revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your
soul was constituted;
They flickered against the
ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the
light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard
the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of
the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the
papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of
feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That
fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent
feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short
square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening
newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to
assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are
curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion
of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel
in vacant lots.
|
|
|
