Lies smashed and gasping for breath,
And he does not regard
This thread irresolutely falling
From a tapestry of memory:
This slender woman in black.
The glittering indifference of morning
Divides their faces.
II.
Afternoon has fallen on this street,
Like an imbecilic organ-grinder
Grinning over his discords.
Dead men and women spin
Their miracles of motion
Upon the grayness of this street.
In this old Jew’s shop
A woman bargains over calico.
With a ghostly naïveté
She reprimands the price of her shroud.
In this pawn-shop stands a man
Parting with his clarinet.
He walks away, with dangling arms,
Like a swindled Gabriel.
In a lunchroom sits a woman
Whose face is a tired sin
Seeking comfort in religion.
A young girl near her is an angel
Puzzled by streaks of mud upon her face
And asking questions of her vanity.
Outside, dead men and women
Are whipped on by the explosive magic
Of an old, resistless masquerade.
Street-cars, wagons, and motor-trucks
Rattle their parodies on life,
And over all the afternoon
Twists, like an imbecilic organ-grinder
Snickering over his discords.
III.
Night has thrown his ecstasy
Of staring, counterfeit eyes
Over the torrent of this street.
Men with faces quicker
And more furtive than time
Stand motionless in doorways.
Women stride down this street.
Many fingers have pulled their faces
To a haggard lack of expression.
They join the motionless men
In the doorways and disappear.
And over them the tame and ghastly coffins
Display their shamefaced grays and reds
Against the tangled vividness of night.
LANDSCAPE
The countless vagaries of maple leaves,
Elastic humbleness of flowers and weeds,
The hill, a placid stoic to all creeds,
They use an obvious language that deceives
The subtle theories of human ears.
Their tongue is motion and they scorn the rhyme
And meter made by men to soothe their fears.
Beneath the warm strength of each August hour
They spurn cohesion and the plans of thought,
With quick simplicity that seems confused
Because it signals mystic whims that tower
Above the thoughts and loves that men have caught:
Beyond the futile words that men have used.