  I Rows of blankly box-like buildings Raise their sodden architecture Into the poised lyric of the sky. At their feet, pawn-shops and burlesque theatres Yawn beneath their livid confetti. In the pawn-shop windows, violins, Cut-glass bowls and satchels mildly blink Upon the mottled turbulence outside, And sit with that detached assurance Gripping things inanimate. Near them, slyly shaded cabarets Stand in bland and ornate sleep, And the glassy luridness Of penny-arcades flays the eyes. The black crowd clatters like an idiot’s wrath. II Wander with me down this street Where the spectral night is caught Like moon-paint on a colourless lane.... On this corner stands a woman Sleekly, sulkily complacent Like a tigress nibbling bits of sugar. At her side, a brawny, white-faced man Whose fingers waltz upon his checkered suit, Searches for one face amidst the crowd. (His smile is like a rambling sword.) His elbows almost touch a snowy girl Whose body blooms with cool withdrawal. From her little nook of peaceful scorn She casts unseeing eyes upon the crowd. Near her stands a weary newsboy With a sullenly elfin face. The night has leaned too intimately On the frightened scampering of his soul. But to this old, staidly patient woman With her softly wintry eyes, Night bends down in gentle revelation Undisturbed by joy or hatred. At her side two factory girls In slyly jaunty hats and swaggering coats, Weave a twinkling summer with their words: A summer where the night parades Rakishly, and like a gold Beau Brummel. With a gnome-like impudence They thrust their little, pink tongues out At men who sidle past. To them, the frantic dinginess of day Has melted to caressing restlessness Tingling with the pride of breasts and hips. At their side two dainty, languid girls Playing with their suavely tangled dresses, Touch the black crowd with unsearching eyes. But the old man on the corner, Bending over his cane like some tired warrior Resting on a sword, peers at the crowd With the smouldering disdain Of a King whipped out of his domain. For a moment he smiles uncertainly. Then wears a look of frail sternness. Musty, Rabelaisian odours stray From this naÏvely gilded family-entrance And make the body of a vagrant Quiver as though unseen roses grazed him. His face is blackly stubbled emptiness Swerving to the rotted prayers of eyes. Yet, sometimes his thin arm leaps out And hangs a moment in the air, As though he raised a violin of hate And lacked the strength to play it. A woman lurches from the family-entrance. With tense solicitude she hugs Her can of beer against her stunted bosom And mumbles to herself. The trampled blasphemy upon her face Holds up, in death, its watery, barren eyes. Indifferently, she brushes past the vagrant: Life has peeled away her sense of touch. III With groping majesty, the endless crowd Pounds its searching chant of feet Down this tawdrily resplendent street. People stray into a burlesque theatre Framed with scarlet, blankly rotund girls. Here a burly cattle-raiser walks With the grace of wind-swept prairie grass. Behind him steps a slender clerk Tendering his sprightly stridency To the stolid, doll-like girl beside him. At his side a heavy youth Dully stands beneath his swaggering mask; And a smiling man in black and white Walks, like some Pierrot grown middle-aged. Mutely twinkling fragments of a romance: Tiny lights stand over this cabaret. Men and women jovially emboldened Stroll beneath the curtained entrance, And their laughs, like softly brazen cow-bells, Change the scene to a strange Pastoral. Hectic shepherdesses drunk with night, Women mingle their coquettish colours.... Suddenly, a man leaps out From the doorway’s blazing pallor, Smashing into the drab sidewalk. His drunken lips and eyelids break apart Like a clown in sudden suicide. Then the mottled nakedness Of the scene comes, like a blow. Stoically crushed in hovering grey Night lies coldly on this street. Momentary sounds crash into night Like ghostly curses stifled in their birth.... And over all the blankly box-like buildings Raise their sodden architecture Into the poised lyric of the sky. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been retained. |
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