Poems (Tree)/Streets
STREETS
I AM going Up and down the roads and alleysThrough the forests of the city,Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams.My mind shall wander through the streetsWhistling to a vague adventure,Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peerAnd casting them away.Dusk is creeping through the townLighting the lamps and loitering,Leaving smoky clouds of shadow,Hovering clouds of peace;And behind her race the windsWhining to the scent of darkness,Scattering the dustWith their swift hounds' feet. . . .I am a hunter in the city's jungle,Exploring all her secret mysteries.I know her well,The moaning highways,And whispering alleys,The chimney-dishevelled roofsWhere the moon walks delicatelyAs a stray spectral cat;The little forlorn squaresWhere one tree standsDrooping bedraggled hair and fingersOver the benches where the people sitAnd stir not from their sullen postures,Staring out where evening passesWith such a sauntering dreamy step.I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands,Fluttered with flags and child imaginings,Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy, Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts.Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpickerWrapped in his tattered coat emaciatePicks up the littered wreck of holidayTo mount the dust heap where our memories lieSprawled in a mess of ruins. . . .I know her monotone of gloomy mansions,Repeating each in each a dull despair,Indifferent and dignified;Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold,With dismal silences of velvet carpets,Where starving souls are keptFeeding upon each other's isolations,Not daring to escape. . . .Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary meWith their crude temples built in praise of lust,Squatting and smiling at some hideous dreamOf fat bejewelled goddesses, or godsFrock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears,Their hats atilt like halos on their heads. . . .
I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd,Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the facesThat are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust. . . .I love the memory-crusted tavernsIn which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tuneUntil the dawn,Like a white minstrel stopped to singFantastic serenades, and called me forthWhere through the crystal chandeliers of morningDew-prismed shone the sun. . . .I love the narrow streets whose crippled housesAre bathed in vitriol twilights,Spitting smoke,Or making oaths and mouths at one another. . . .While between The flaring tinsel lights of shop and windowAre gaps of goblin darkness passagingInto Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin. . . .Wan children stare at me, and in their eyesI see the flickering pallor of the lamps,Reflective of the solitude of stars. . . .And I am thrilledWith horror and the hope for tragedies. . . .
But, they surround my heart these weary streets,Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths,And through them pass foreverThose shadow figures trudging through the greyLike penitent souls through haunted corridors. . . .Ah, Grief, thou wanderer,Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet!Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes,Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears,And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer.Through all the winding mazes of the cityThy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen,And thou dost stand before the gate of brass,And by the iron door,Under the windows where we sit and waitFor some sweet promise to unfold itselfFrom the shut scrolls of sleep,And at the dusty curtain that dividesGlory from Death,And lover from the lover. . . .
Now in my room I sitAnd round me falls the darknessIn rustling folds of peace.But round my heart I knowNo scarves of sleep and silence can be boundTo shut the city out. For I shall feel the rush of streetsShooting inquisitive fingers into chaos,Piercing the night's remote divinity.And I shall never rid me of these scarsThat time and man have cut into my thought,Never shake off my shouldersThe burden of the city's pain.Oh, never shall we escape thee,Mother of mutiny and want,Thou beautiful mistress of Grief . . .Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nightsBeating with ineloquent handsThe tambourines of time,The drums of war;Fevering our mindsWith the swollen traffic of thoughts,The wheels and rattle of an endless search. . . .
Tired I am with wandering,Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds,More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey,Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars! . . .
1918