CLOUDS ACROSS THE CANYON
Shadows of clouds
March across the canyon,
Shadows of blue hands passing
Over a curtain of flame.
Clutching, staggering, upstriking,
Darting in blue-black fury,
To where pinnacles, green and orange,
Await.
The winds are battling and striving to break them:
Thin lightnings spit and flicker,
The peaks seem a dance of scarlet demons
Flitting amid the shadows.
Grey rain-curtains wave afar off,
Wisps of vapour curl and vanish.
The sun throws soft shafts of golden light
Over rose-buttressed palisades.
Now the clouds are a lazy procession;
Blue balloons bobbing solemnly
Over black-dappled walls,
Where rise sharp-fretted, golden-roofed cathedrals
Exultantly, and split the sky with light.
THE UNQUIET STREET
By day and night this street is not still:
Omnibuses with red tail-lamps,
Taxicabs with shiny eyes,
Rumble, shunning its ugliness.
It is corrugated with wheel-ruts,
It is dented and pockmarked with traffic,
It has no time for sleep.
It heaves its old scarred countenance
Skyward between the buildings
And never says a word.
On rainy nights
It dully gleams
Like the cold tarnished scales of a snake:
And over it hang arc-lamps,
Blue-white death-lilies on black stems.