Classic Poem

I

Tame and ghastly coffins
Display their shamefaced greys and reds
Against the passive vividness of morning.
From the base of these large coffins
Men and women walk,
Like briskly servile automata.
Some repentant toy-maker
Has given them a cunning pretense of life.

A waitress hurries to her work.
Her yellow hair and face stained red
Blend into a garish mendicant
Who steals unreal composure from the morning.
Behind her tramps a bloodless Jew.
The stench of endless denials
Has wrenched his youthful face
Into a prophecy of middle age.
He does not see the lamely leaden
Shop-girl, where despair and apathy,
Fighting, produce the motion of her limbs.
She does not see this elderly laborer
Upon whose face an artist
Lies smashed and gasping for breath,
And he does not regard
This thread irresolutely falling
From a tapestry of memory:
This slender woman in black.
The glittering indifference of morning
Divides their faces.

II

Afternoon has fallen on this street,
Like an imbecilic organ-grinder
Grinning over his discords.
Dead men and women spin
Their miracles of motion
Upon the greyness of this street.
In this old Jew's shop
A woman bargains over calico.
With a ghostly naivete
She reprimands the price of her shroud.
In this pawn-shop stands a man
Parting with his clarinet.
He walks away, with dangling arms,
Like a swindled Gabriel.
In a lunchroom sits a woman
Whose face is a tired sin
Seeking comfort in religion.
A young girl near her is an angel
Puzzled by streaks of mud upon her face
And asking questions of her vanity.
Outside, dead men and women
Are whipped on by the explosive magic
Of an old, resistless masquerade.
Street-cars, wagons, and motor-trucks
Rattle their parodies on life.
And over all the afternoon
Twists, like an imbecilic organ-grinder
Snickering over his discords.

III

Night has thrown his ecstasy
Of staring, counterfeit eyes
Over the torrent of this street.
Men with faces quicker
And more furtive than time
Stand motionless in doorways.
Women stride down this street.
Many fingers have pulled their faces
To a haggard lack of expression.
They join the motionless men
In the doorways and disappear.
And over them the tame and ghastly coffins
Display their shamefaced greys and reds
Against the tangled vividness of night.