NORTH CLARK STREET, CHICAGO

Tame and ghastly coffins Display their shamefaced grays and reds Against the passive vividness of morning. From the base of these large coffins Men and women walk, Like briskly servile automata. Some repentant toy-maker Has given them a cunning pretense of life. A waitress hurries to her work. Her yellow hair and face stained red Blend into a garish mendicant Who steals unreal composure from the morning. Behind her tramps a bloodless Jew. The stench of endless denials Has wrenched his youthful face Into a prophecy of middle age. He does not see the lamely leaden Shop-girl, where despair and apathy, Fighting, produce the motion of her limbs. She does not see this elderly laborer Upon whose face an artist

Lies smashed and gasping for breath, And he does not regard This thread irresolutely falling From a tapestry of memory: This slender woman in black. The glittering indifference of morning Divides their faces.

Afternoon has fallen on this street, Like an imbecilic organ-grinder Grinning over his discords. Dead men and women spin Their miracles of motion Upon the grayness of this street. In this old Jew’s shop A woman bargains over calico. With a ghostly naïveté She reprimands the price of her shroud. In this pawn-shop stands a man Parting with his clarinet. He walks away, with dangling arms, Like a swindled Gabriel. In a lunchroom sits a woman Whose face is a tired sin Seeking comfort in religion. A young girl near her is an angel Puzzled by streaks of mud upon her face And asking questions of her vanity. Outside, dead men and women Are whipped on by the explosive magic Of an old, resistless masquerade. Street-cars, wagons, and motor-trucks Rattle their parodies on life, And over all the afternoon Twists, like an imbecilic organ-grinder Snickering over his discords.

Night has thrown his ecstasy Of staring, counterfeit eyes Over the torrent of this street. Men with faces quicker And more furtive than time Stand motionless in doorways. Women stride down this street. Many fingers have pulled their faces To a haggard lack of expression. They join the motionless men In the doorways and disappear. And over them the tame and ghastly coffins Display their shamefaced grays and reds Against the tangled vividness of night.