The speaker moves through a crowd of faces, reading their smiles as a language that ordinary speech cannot hold. A nervous shop-girl’s face briefly flickers with the memory of a lost love; a plump girl beside her unknowingly radiates loneliness; an old man shows a meek embarrassment, as if some long-ago debt still haunts him. A woman’s scorched-looking face laughs in a way that sounds false, while another fragile figure seems to understand a loss too deep to bear. These are not happy smiles. The speaker sees them as flashes of hidden feeling, moments when private pain or memory breaks through the surface before disappearing again. The mood is quiet, sad, and intensely observant, as if the speaker is catching secrets no one intended to reveal. By the end, the original phrase “helplessly” becomes “hopefully,” suggesting that such unspoken words might also carry a fragile kind of hope.
Smiles — Summary
Smiles are the words beyond the words That thoughts abandon helplessly. Upon this nervous shop-girl’s face, Where clusters of tiny limpness meet, A frightened spark leaps high and drops Into the hot pause of a banished love. A lustrelessly plump Girl beside her does not know That her face for moments glows Into a helpless solitude. Upon an old man’s face Are gleams of meek embarrassment-- The faded presence of some old debt? This woman’s face is scorched By a torch that falls from weary hands And makes her laugh an unheard lie. The face of this tamed sprite Shimmers with an understanding Of the opaque loss she cannot bear, And I see that smiles are sometimes Words beyond the words That thoughts abandon hopefully.