CITY STREETS
This pavement and the sordid boast of stone
And brick that wins the pity of a sky
Are only martyred symbols made to buy
A dream of permanence for flesh and bone.
The jumbled, furtive anecdotes of lips
And limbs that bring their fever to this street,
They will subside to fragments of defeat
Within the cool republic where death trips.
This is an age where flesh desires to shape
Intense hyperboles in prose and verse,
Transforming city streets and country lanes
To backgrounds aiding physical escape.
But city streets are waiting to disperse
With ruins the fight and plight of earthly pains.
DECADENT CRY[A]
Hill-flowers salute his feet
Upon the upward slant of a path.
His destination does not matter.
His legs divide the spacious tragedy
Of distance into the small translation
Of steps, and with their aid he reaches
The fraudulent temple of a pause or end.
Hill-flowers, important and unprejudiced,
Bow to this monster-clown.
His feet, ridiculous and neat,
Do not stop, for they must ape
A certainty and hasten to attack
Or praise fixed idols made by flesh and mind.
Hill-flowers, trimly polished
Devices hailing preciosity;
Rumpled by the wind
To scores of original caprices;
Bearing the transfigured skirmish
Of spiritual moods that men call color;
Swiftly and unassumingly
Deaf to lusts and traditions—
They are not regarded
By the men who walk, flat-footed,
Or with scholarly exactitude,
In chase of an ardent chicanery
Known as flesh, and elderly
Quibbles of mind and emotion.
Only an intellect clad in sprightly chiffon
Can spy the importance of flowers on a hill.
[A] Dedicated to a rare moment of intelligence on the part of The Dial.