Advice: A Book of Poems

<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</SPAN></span> <h2 class="nobreak">SOUTH STATE STREET: CHICAGO</h2> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="stanza"> <div class="versecenter">I</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Rows of blankly box-like buildings</div> <div class="verse">Raise their sodden architecture</div> <div class="verse">Into the poised lyric of the sky.</div> <div class="verse">At their feet, pawn-shops and burlesque theatres</div> <div class="verse">Yawn beneath their livid confetti.</div> <div class="verse">In the pawn-shop windows, violins,</div> <div class="verse">Cut-glass bowls and satchels mildly blink</div> <div class="verse">Upon the mottled turbulence outside,</div> <div class="verse">And sit with that detached assurance</div> <div class="verse">Gripping things inanimate.</div> <div class="verse">Near them, slyly shaded cabarets</div> <div class="verse">Stand in bland and ornate sleep,</div> <div class="verse">And the glassy luridness</div> <div class="verse">Of penny-arcades flays the eyes.</div> <div class="verse">The black crowd clatters like an idiot&#8217;s wrath.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</SPAN></span> <div class="versecenter">II</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Wander with me down this street</div> <div class="verse">Where the spectral night is caught</div> <div class="verse">Like moon-paint on a colourless lane....</div> <div class="verse">On this corner stands a woman</div> <div class="verse">Sleekly, sulkily complacent</div> <div class="verse">Like a tigress nibbling bits of sugar.</div> <div class="verse">At her side, a brawny, white-faced man</div> <div class="verse">Whose fingers waltz upon his checkered suit,</div> <div class="verse">Searches for one face amidst the crowd.</div> <div class="verse">(His smile is like a rambling sword.)</div> <div class="verse">His elbows almost touch a snowy girl</div> <div class="verse">Whose body blooms with cool withdrawal.</div> <div class="verse">From her little nook of peaceful scorn</div> <div class="verse">She casts unseeing eyes upon the crowd.</div> <div class="verse">Near her stands a weary newsboy</div> <div class="verse">With a sullenly elfin face.</div> <div class="verse">The night has leaned too intimately</div> <div class="verse">On the frightened scampering of his soul.</div> <div class="verse">But to this old, staidly patient woman</div> <div class="verse">With her softly wintry eyes,</div> <div class="verse">Night bends down in gentle revelation</div> <div class="verse">Undisturbed by joy or hatred.</div> <div class="verse">At her side two factory girls</div> <div class="verse">In slyly jaunty hats and swaggering coats,</div> <div class="verse">Weave a twinkling summer with their words:</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</SPAN></span> <div class="verse">A summer where the night parades</div> <div class="verse">Rakishly, and like a gold Beau Brummel.</div> <div class="verse">With a gnome-like impudence</div> <div class="verse">They thrust their little, pink tongues out</div> <div class="verse">At men who sidle past.</div> <div class="verse">To them, the frantic dinginess of day</div> <div class="verse">Has melted to caressing restlessness</div> <div class="verse">Tingling with the pride of breasts and hips.</div> <div class="verse">At their side two dainty, languid girls</div> <div class="verse">Playing with their suavely tangled dresses,</div> <div class="verse">Touch the black crowd with unsearching eyes.</div> <div class="verse">But the old man on the corner,</div> <div class="verse">Bending over his cane like some tired warrior</div> <div class="verse">Resting on a sword, peers at the crowd</div> <div class="verse">With the smouldering disdain</div> <div class="verse">Of a King whipped out of his domain.</div> <div class="verse">For a moment he smiles uncertainly.</div> <div class="verse">Then wears a look of frail sternness.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Musty, Rabelaisian odours stray</div> <div class="verse">From this naïvely gilded family-entrance</div> <div class="verse">And make the body of a vagrant</div> <div class="verse">Quiver as though unseen roses grazed him.</div> <div class="verse">His face is blackly stubbled emptiness</div> <div class="verse">Swerving to the rotted prayers of eyes.</div> <div class="verse">Yet, sometimes his thin arm leaps out</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</SPAN></span> <div class="verse">And hangs a moment in the air,</div> <div class="verse">As though he raised a violin of hate</div> <div class="verse">And lacked the strength to play it.</div> <div class="verse">A woman lurches from the family-entrance.</div> <div class="verse">With tense solicitude she hugs</div> <div class="verse">Her can of beer against her stunted bosom</div> <div class="verse">And mumbles to herself.</div> <div class="verse">The trampled blasphemy upon her face</div> <div class="verse">Holds up, in death, its watery, barren eyes.</div> <div class="verse">Indifferently, she brushes past the vagrant:</div> <div class="verse">Life has peeled away her sense of touch.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="versecenter">III</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">With groping majesty, the endless crowd</div> <div class="verse">Pounds its searching chant of feet</div> <div class="verse">Down this tawdrily resplendent street.</div> <div class="verse">People stray into a burlesque theatre</div> <div class="verse">Framed with scarlet, blankly rotund girls.</div> <div class="verse">Here a burly cattle-raiser walks</div> <div class="verse">With the grace of wind-swept prairie grass.</div> <div class="verse">Behind him steps a slender clerk</div> <div class="verse">Tendering his sprightly stridency</div> <div class="verse">To the stolid, doll-like girl beside him.</div> <div class="verse">At his side a heavy youth</div> <div class="verse">Dully stands beneath his swaggering mask;</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</SPAN></span> <div class="verse">And a smiling man in black and white</div> <div class="verse">Walks, like some Pierrot grown middle-aged.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Mutely twinkling fragments of a romance:</div> <div class="verse">Tiny lights stand over this cabaret.</div> <div class="verse">Men and women jovially emboldened</div> <div class="verse">Stroll beneath the curtained entrance,</div> <div class="verse">And their laughs, like softly brazen cow-bells,</div> <div class="verse">Change the scene to a strange Pastoral.</div> <div class="verse">Hectic shepherdesses drunk with night,</div> <div class="verse">Women mingle their coquettish colours....</div> <div class="verse">Suddenly, a man leaps out</div> <div class="verse">From the doorway&#8217;s blazing pallor,</div> <div class="verse">Smashing into the drab sidewalk.</div> <div class="verse">His drunken lips and eyelids break apart</div> <div class="verse">Like a clown in sudden suicide.</div> <div class="verse">Then the mottled nakedness</div> <div class="verse">Of the scene comes, like a blow.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Stoically crushed in hovering grey</div> <div class="verse">Night lies coldly on this street.</div> <div class="verse">Momentary sounds crash into night</div> <div class="verse">Like ghostly curses stifled in their birth....</div> <div class="verse">And over all the blankly box-like buildings</div> <div class="verse">Raise their sodden architecture</div> <div class="verse">Into the poised lyric of the sky.</div> </div></div> </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />