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Sunday on Third Avenue
This is that gray, dead holiday:
The world external, vacant,
And the brain careens ...
An apathy descends upon the shuttered shops,
the tattered screens,
Invades the tepid coffeepots,
Winds through a thousand furnished rooms,
Then flows in streams
down gutters into sewer-drains.
Blurred windows gloze the hours that hover
Over a drunk's paralysis,
The swift delirium of a lover,
A pauper's thinly clawing fist ...
Long trains that grind, and roll, and clamor
Lunge in a tropic slum of dreams
With rasping clank of horrid chains
And medieval mutterings...
The retrograde metropolis
Crumbles into glaucous mist
And lies along the tracks, remote,
Menacing no-one.
We stand upon a platform; wait,
abstract, intent,
like sheep that huddle on a slope
when, from afar, a storm is imminent...
It's late; long shadows ricochet:
Cold, draughty blocks grow desolate,
In igneous neon, strange words flow,
Liturgic, seeking gift of grace...
Now headlines, movies, comic-strips,
What whirls between parentheses?
Impervious centuries stand and watch;
Reign absolute: morose, hard cops
Pounding the beat.