Early Rising

Marvin Solomon

This is the society of six thirty:
The paper lunches, the overalls,
The faint broken hurdy-gurdy
Music of factory whistles;

The tall buildings shouldering aside

The mist, the convent corner where
Distant grain elevators hide
Themselves in winnowed night; tubercular

Street car muffling its empty hack.
This is the sound and feel
Of six thirty: women in black,
Duennas and pale charges steal

Westward, a knight-lance drinking
Sunlight-fords medievalness;
Down mountains glaciers fling
White prongs to dark cypress

Groves-a drawbridge sews the wide
And deep abyss with terse
Monosyllables connecting countryside
With castle, verse with unverse.