THE WALKERS
(Strike Pickets—Lower Fifth Ave.)
It is past day and its brilliance, it is not yet sumptuous night
For the moon to shine on gardened roofs like a white nut peeled of its husk,
The march of the ant-hill crowds below is like sand falling from a height,
And the lost horns of the taxis cry hooting through the dusk.
Gray as rain in an autumn wood when the skies are pale with cloud
Are the light and the street and the faces where the elephant busses roll,
Dark motors shine like a seal’s wet skin, and they and their rich are proud,
But the walkers are dim and aimless on a dolorous way of the soul.
I watch, and my soft, pleased body cries for the rooms with lights like flowers,
For the delicate talk of women, and music’s deep-perfumed smart,
And I sweat at the walkers crushed by machining, implacable hours,
And in torment I turn away—but their march is over my heart.
They are helpless as drifting weed, they are stung with insane impatience
At themselves and their lords and their hunger no toil can feed till it sleeps.
They are racked earth hating the plow, they are dung at the roots of the nations,
They are wheat that will not be bread and burns at the scythe that reaps.
Ensigns of honor they bear not, their songs are ignorant clamors.
I hate their joy and their fear. I am bitter afraid of pain.
But the pitiful tune of their feet is trampling my soul with hammers,
And I must follow them out in the desolate face of the rain.
From the silken-furnitured halls, from the golden and pleasant places
To the lurching and crippled march that an idiot voice proclaims!
To Man’s face suddenly made from a million poor men’s faces!
And each walker arrayed with suns that are burning celestial flames!
Ask not watchword nor sign—there is neither tocsin nor clarion;
Only the strength of the flood, the might of the falling snow,
The cry of the bitter clay to the God who devised it carrion,
The purblind silence of sleep, as night to the night we flow.