Meest gelezen ▸
Lola Ridge
Drab discoloration
Of faces, façades, pawn-shops,
Second-hand clothing,
Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms,
Odors of rancid life...
Deadly uniformity
Of eyes and windows
Alike devoid of light...
Holes wherein life scratches--
Mangy life
Nosing to the gutter's end...
Show-rooms and mimic pillars
Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules
Bosoms and posturing thighs...
Over all the Elevated
Droning like a bloated fly.
The barking of little dogs in the night is more remembered than
the shining of the stars:
Only those who watch for long may see the moon rise:
And they are mad ever after and go with blind eyes
Nosing hungrily in the gutter for the scraps that men throw to the dogs;
Few heed their babblings.
When the leaves fall off the trees
Everybody walks on them :
Once they had a time of ease
High above, and every breeze
Used to stay and talk to them.
Then they were so debonair
As they fluttered up and down ;
Dancing in the sunny air,
Dancing without knowing there
Was a gutter in the town.
Now they have no place at all !
All the home that they can find
Is a gutter by a wall.
And the wind that waits their fall
Is an apache of a wind.
Two narrow files of houses scowl,
Blackened with grime, on either side
Of the road, and through them prowl
Strange men and women, shifty-eyed
And slinking, and a drink-shop throws
Its flare of yellow light adown
The cracked pavement. The gutter flows
A turbid, evil stream. A clown,
Drink-sodden, lurches by and sings
Obscenely. A woman trails behind
With old, bad eyes ; her clothing clings
Rain-soaked about her. No daring wind,
Light-hearted, from a garden blows
Its sweetness here from any rose.
Chilled into a serenity
As rigid as your pose
You linger trustingly,
But a gutter waits for you.
Your elegance does not secure
You favors with the sun.
He is not one to pity fragileness.
He thinks all cheeks should burn
And feel how tears can run.