We English make a tepid blot On the messiness Of the passionate Italian life-traffic Throbbing the street up steep Up up to the porta Culminating In the stained frescoe of the dragon-slayer The hips of women sway Among the crawling children they produce And the church hits the barracks Where The greyness of marching men Falls through the greyness of stone Oranges half-rotten are sold at a reduction Hoarsely advertised as broken heads BROKEN HEADS and the barber Has an imitation mirror And Mary preserve our mistresses from seeing us as we see ourselves Shaving ICE CREAM Licking is larger than mouths Boots than feet Slip Slap and the string dragging And the angle of the sun Cuts the whole lot in half And warms the folded hands Of a consumptive Left outside her chair is broken And she wonders how we feel For we walk very quickly The noonday cannon Having scattered the neighbour's pigeons The smell of small cooking From luckier houses Is cruel to the maimed cat Hiding Among the carpenter's shavings From three boys -- One holding a bar -- Who nevertheless Born of human parents Cry when locked in the dark Fluidic blots of sky Shift among roofs Between bandy legs Jerk patches of street Interrupted by clacking Of all the green shutters From which Bits of bodies Variously leaning Mingle eyes with the commotion For there is little to do The false pillow-spreads Hugely initialed Already adjusted On matrimonial beds And the glint on the china virgin Consummately dusted Having been thrown Anything or something That might have contaminated intimacy OUT Onto the middle of the street | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FOR THE NEW YEAR by EDWIN MARKHAM THE METROPOLITAN TOWER by SARA TEASDALE THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS THE SPRING OF THE YEAR by ALLAN CUNNINGHAM TO DEAN-BOURN, A RUDE RIVER IN DEVON, BY WHICH ... HE LIVED by ROBERT HERRICK SENEX TO MATT. PRIOR by JAMES KENNETH STEPHEN TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM; FROM HER BOY by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON |