eyes go thinly
of time and the coming
light backing up on us and
crawl of circumstance: people
everywhere
displacing air as if
belonging to them
and I
displacing air as if
belonging to me.
outrageous dream of
symmetry / crack
but close to the place
where vision stands: the walk
the run
of signs, crumbling habit.
suddenly i cant hear anything
other than the loud thumping
of my own heart, the faint scent
of sweet potatoes and freshly
worn clothes waft in the charged
air around us. crowds buzz by
in an endless stream of life,
forming and dissolving into shapeless
blobs, a remainder of the world
revolving and expanding as time
just seems to pause for a while;
a break in its inexhaustible pace
makes my hairs stand on edge
in the apprehension of it all. static
fills my head and i nearly succumb
to the buzzing electricity in my soul,
Around us people
talked on inanely;
we two fled,
seeking shadow.
Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping place,
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.
The lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,
These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd
Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
With sardonic futility
The multi-coloured crowd,
Hurried by fervent sensuality,
Flees from something carried on its back.
Endlessly subdued, a sound
Pours up from the crowd,
Like some one ever gasping for breath
To utter releasing words.
Through the artificial valley
Made by gaudy evasions,
The stifled crowd files up and down,
Stabbing thought with rapid noises.
Women strutting dulcetly,
Embroider their unappeased hungers,
And men stumble toward a flitting opiate.
Sometimes a moment breaks apart
Crowds are passing on the street,
Tuck on tuck and pleat on pleat
Of people hurrying along,
Homeward bound, throng on throng.
Their work is finished, mine undone;
Still my stitches run.
I cannot watch the people go,
Fold on fold and row on row;
But I know each pulsing tread
Is spinning out a life's fine thread;
I know the stars, like needle-gleams,
Are pricking through the sky's wide seams ;
And soon the moon must show its face,
Like a pearl button stitched in place.
All the long hours of the day
Are finished now and folded away;
I made a little song to-day,
And then I wandered down Broadway,
And saw the strange mad people run
And dance about me in the sun,
Or dive into the Underground
Like rabbits frightened by the sound
Of their own scampering through the grass;
I watched a thousand people pass,
But not a one did I hear say--
I made a little song to-day.
I made a little song to-day,
It sang beside me all the way
Until I reached the lower town,
Where crowds went surging up and down.
Their eyes were hard and faces white,
But some of them looked glad and bright,
Old Lohan peers through the dusty glass,
From a jumble of curios quaint and rare;
And he watches the hurrying crowds that pass
The whole day long, through the ancient square.
Wrapped in his robe of gold and jade,
Here by the window he patiently waits
For the sound that the gongs and the conches made,
In the days of old at the temple gates.
He heaves no sighs and he sheds no tears,
For his heart is bronze, and he does not know
That his temple has been for a thousand years
But a mound of dust where the bamboos grow.
So here he sits through the nights and the days,
And the sun goes up and down the sky;
But he often looks with a wistful gaze
At the crowds that always pass him by.
Roar of the rushing train fearfully rocking,
Impatient people jammed in line for food,
The rasping noise of cars together knocking,
And worried waiters, some in ugly mood,
Crowding into the choking pantry hole
To call out dishes for each angry glutton
Exasperated grown beyond control,
From waiting for his soup or fish or mutton.
At last the station’s reached, the engine stops;
For bags and wraps the red-caps circle round;
From off the step the passenger lightly hops,
And seeks his cab or tram-car homeward bound;
The waiters pass out weary, listless, glum,
To spend their tips on harlots, cards and rum.
HATS, where do you belong?
what is under you?
On the rim of a skyscraper's forehead
I looked down and saw : hats : fifty thousand hats:
Swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and
waterfalls,
Stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of
prairie corn.
Hats: tell me your high hopes.
The grave of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard
at the end of Wall Street.
The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity
yard where Wall Street stops.
And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen,
sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of
graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies,
wages and love.
An iron picket fence . . . and streaming thousands
along Broadway sidewalks . . . straw hats,
faces, legs ... a singing, talking, hustling river
. . . down the great street that ends with a Sea.
. . . easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton.
. . . easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton.
. . . easy are the great governments and the great
steamboats.