Geranium blouse blossoms
under sodium glow.
Mascara smile masks
her feelings, her tears
transparent as rain.
Sidewalk puddles frown
as neon rainbows kiss
her stiletto shoes.
She paces the track,
marking the boundaries of
consent, on slender tanned
stems turning to watch
headlights beam like a
flower following the sun.
I have visited men's rooms
in several bars
with the rows
of urinals like old men
and the six-sided odor
of disinfectant.
I have felt the sadness
of the small white tiles,
of the repeated shapes
and the unavoidable whiteness.
I have understood
that some afternoon
when it rains and the streets
blacken with umbrellas,
a white army
from all of the men's rooms
The deities of dream
Take their afternoon stroll down this street
Leading to the sea.
This avenue is neither
Broad nor beautiful,
But the African-born wind rises
And leaves something here
Akin to the warm
And domestic happiness
Of those who don’t ask why.
The clouds sketch
The outline of the travelers
Who discover the waves and pray
For their dead children,
Or for the ones that never arrived,
Like this treeless street
People that I meet and pass
In the city's broken roar,
Faces that I lose so soon
And have never found before,
Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?
Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places--
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.
--People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?
This street is callous apathy
In a scale of greys and browns.
Its black roof-line suggests
Flat bodies unable to rise.
Even its screams are listlessness
Having an evil dream.
Its air is swarthy rawness
Troubled with ash cans and cellars.
An old woman ambles on
With a black bag that seems part of her back,
And a candidly hawk-like face.
She croons a smothered lullaby
That sifts a flitting roundness
Into her sharply parted face.
Then she surrenders her hand
To the welter of a garbage can.
The baker’s boy delivers loaves
All up and down our street.
His car is white, his clothes are white,
White to his very feet.
I wonder if he stays that way.
I don’t see how he does all day.
I’d like to watch him going home
When all the loaves are out.
His clothes must look quite different then,
At least I have no doubt.
The houses of the city no longer hum and play:
They lie like careless drowsy giants, dumb, estranged.
One presses to his breast his toy, a lighted pane:
One stirs uneasily: one is cold in death.
And the late moon, fearfully peering over an immense shoulder,
Sees, in the shadow below, the unpeopled hush of a street.
You street of sorrows bending
Over your golden lamps in the evening;
Dark street that is very silent,
And everywhere the same:
Elsewhere there is song and riot,
Like golden fireflies flickering,
Elsewhere the crane's gaunt muscles
Tug the city up to the stars.
But who in the dawn should come near you?
There are dry leaves rattling behind him.
And who should come in the noonday?
There are shadows that squat on the pave.
And who should come in the evening?
There is one: a ship in dark waters.
And who should come at nightfall,
To feel cold hands at his heart?
Marlboro' and Waterloo and Trafalgar,
Tuileries, Talavera, Valenciennes,
Were strange names all, and all familiar;
For down their streets I went, early and late
(Is there a street where I have never been
Of all those hundreds, narrow, skyless, straight?)--
Early and late, they were my woods and meadows;
The rain upon their dust my summer smell;
Their scant herb and brown sparrows and harsh shadows
Were all my spring. Was there another spring?
I knew their noisy desolation well,
Drinking it up as a child drinks everything,
Knowing no other world than brick and stone,
With one rich memory of the earth all bright.
Now all is fallen into oblivion--
All that I was, in years of school and play,
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.
My stitches, like the even tide of feet
Beating against the pavement of the street
Below my window-sill, forever run
Before the footsteps of the sun.
Down streets of seams, and formal avenues
Of basted hems, each crowding stitch pursues.
Seeking no destination on the way —
Only the end of day.
Sometimes when I am long alone
I wonder what is loneliness —
This silence like a deep bell's tone,
These moments, motionless?
This hush above the nervous street?
Removed as is the tree that stands,
Hill-high, with burrowing root-feet
And boughs like reaching hands.
As in my blood I feel life press.
Like sap into the frailest bough,
I think if such is loneliness
Then I am lonely now.