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.