  Thousands of faces break To one word called dramatic: Thousands of faces attain An over-worked, realistic Clash of stupidities. At first the mob spreads out Its animated fights of lines— Butcher with a face one degree Removed from the dead flesh which he cuts; Socialist whose face rebukes The cry for justice tumbling from his lips; Five professors of English Whose faces are essentially School-boys coerced by erudition; Bank-clerk with a face Where curiosity Weakly contends against The shrewd frown brought by counting slips of money; Girls whose first twenty years Have merely shown them the exact Shade of pouting necessary For the gain of price-marked objects; Boys with cocksure faces Where an awkward lyric Wins the vitriol of civilization; Shop-girl whose face is like The faint beginning of a courtezan Prisoned by the trance of unsought labor; Wealthy man whose face Holds a courteous, bored Reply to traces of imagination; Housewife with a round Face where dying disappointments Old men with faces where a psychic doubt Invades the ruins of noses, lips, and eyes And dreams of better structures; Old woman with a face Like a bashful rag-picker Rescuing bits of cast-off deviltries Beneath the ebbing light of eyes. Stare upon these faces, With emotion cooled by every Bantering of thought, And they fade to one disorganized Defeat that craves the smooth Lubrications of music. The mob upon this street Reiterates one shout: “We want lyrics! Give us lyrics!” Space, and stars, and conscious thought Stand above the house-tops of this street; Look down with frowning interest; Regard the implacable enemy. |
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