Determinedly peppered with signs, The omnibus ambles without curiosity. Southampton Row, Malborne Road, Charing Cross-- These names have no relation To the buildings they partition If one mutters, “I shall go to Euston Road,” Imagination is relieved of all errands And, decently ticketed, enters the omnibus. If one muttered, “I shall go to protesting angles, Surreptitiously middle-aged, And find a reticent line to play with,” One would violate The hasty convenience of labels And seriously examine one’s destination. If poplar-trees, brief violets and green glades On any country road had each received An incongruous name--Smith’s Tree, C. Jackson’s Clump, or Ferguson’s Depression-- And city streets had never known a label, Most poets would have turned their fluid obsession On lamp-posts and the grandeur of ash-cans. It would be grimly realistic now To write about a violet or a cow. SUMMER EVENING: NEW YORK SUBWAY-STATION Perspiring violence derides The pathetic collapse of dirt. An effervescence of noises Depends upon cement for its madness. Electric light is taut and dull, Like a nauseated suspense. This kind of heat is the recollection Of an orgy in a swamp. Soiled caskets joined together Slide to rasping stand-stills. People savagely tamper With each other’s bodies, Scampering in and out of doorways. Weighted with apathetic bales of people The soiled caskets rattle on. The scene consists of mosaics Jerkily pieced together and blown apart. A symbol of billowing torment, This sturdy girl leans against an iron girder. Weariness has loosened her face With its shining cruelty. Round and poverty-stricken Her face renounces life. Her white cotton waist is a wet skin on her breast: Her black hat, crisp and delicate, Does not understand her head. An old man stoops beside her, Sweat and wrinkles erupting Upon the blunt remnants of his face. A little black pot of a hat Corrupts his grey-haired head. Two figures on a subway-platform, Pieced together by an old complaint. GARBAGE-HEAP The wind was shrill and mercenary, Like a housewife pacing down the sky. Green weeds and tin-cans in the yard Made a debris of ludicrous dissipations. The ochre of cold elations Had settled on the cans. Their brilliant labels peeped from the weeds, Like the remains of a charlatan. A bone reclined against a fence-post And mouldily congratulated life. A woman’s garter wasted its faded frills Upon a newspaper argument. The shipwrecked rancor of bottles and boxes Was pressed to disfigured complexities. A smell of torrential asperity Knew the spirit of the yard. Contented or incensed, The wreckage stood in the yard, One shade below the sardonic. IMPULSIVE DIALOGUE _Poet_ Will you, like other men, Offer me indigo indignities? _Undertaker_