II
I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow
is falling.
Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow,
his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies
crying forty thousand men are dead along the
Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar
of the city at his bronze feet.
A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with
long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they
hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their
pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight
and into the dawn.
DUNES
WHAT do we see here in the sand dunes of the white
moon alone with our thoughts, Bill,
Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying
scarves around their heads dancing,
Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the
other of all the dead,
The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one
piled here in the moon,
Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of
the wind wanted,
What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men
beat their heads on,
Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive
on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for--
what, Bill?
ON THE WAY
LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books,
Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with
lawyers
And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been
getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43