When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the
wind,
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the
water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass
Is like a little robin's song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one
flower
For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.
I long for the baby to wander hither to me
Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,
So that she can stand on my knee
With her little bare feet in my hands,
Cool like syringa buds,
Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.
I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire’s call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!
Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.
Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Thirty-two Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.
Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.
All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks
stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel.
Now they hold their toes and ankles
to the drift of running water.
Then they go to the bunk cars
and eat mulligan and prune sauce.
Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars,
tell smutty stories
About men and women they have known,
countries they have seen,
Railroads they have built —
and then the deep sleep of children.
The policeman buys shoes slow and careful ; the teamster
buys gloves slow and careful; they take care of
their feet and hands; they live on their feet and
hands.
The milkman never argues; he works alone and no one
speaks to him; the city is asleep when he is on the
job; he puts a bottle on six hundred porches and
calls it a day's work; he climbs two hundred
wooden stairways ; two horses are company for him ;
he never argues.
The rolling-mill men and the sheet-steel men are brothers
of cinders; they empty cinders out of their shoes
after the day's work; they ask their wives to fix
burnt holes in the knees of their trousers; their
necks and ears are covered with a smut; they scour
The noise of passing feet
On the prairie —
Is it men or gods
Who come out of the silence?