Classic Poem

Out in the fog stained, mud stained street they stand
Two women and a man. Their draggled clothes
Hang on their withered bodies. It is cold
So cold the very rain and fog feel starved
And bite into their scarcely covered bones.
Their purple hands move restlessly, at first
They try to shield them with their thread-bare cuffs
Then thrust them in their coats, and then again
Blow on their fingers, but to no avail.
The women wear a strangely faded look
As though the rain which beat upon them both
And, never ceasing, always dripping down
Had worn away their features…In their eyes
Hunger had lit a pallid, wavering torch. . . .
The man is like a seedy, draggled bird
He frowns upon the women, savagely. . . . . .
Opposite them a warehouse, huge and grey
And ugly—in the ghostly light of fog
It looms gigantic—through the open doors
Men and more men are passing out and in.
Then, at a signal from the draggled man
The women sing—God, from their withered mouths
A tragedy of singing issues forth
High pitched and wandering, crazy tuneless tunes
Over and over comes the same refrain
‘Say, shepherds, have you seen my Flora pass this way.
The simple words hang trembling in the air
So strange, so foreign, if the filthy street
Had blossomed into daisies; if a vine
Had wreathed itself upon the warehouse wall
It would have been more natural—they sing
Shivering, starving—on their withered mouths
The winter day has set a frozen kiss. . . .
Coldly impassive, cynically grim
The warehouse seems to sneer at them and cry
‘My doors are shut and bolted, locked and barred—
And in my bosom nurture I my spawn
Upon the blackened blood of my stone heart
I blind their eyes. I stop their mouths with dust
I hypnotise them with the chink of gold
They search and grope—but ever out of reach
I keep it, jingling. They can never bear
Your Floras and your shepherds…’ Through the fog
The quavering voices fall and rise again…
Are silent—and the trio shuffles on.