Danger is silent in the bloodless square: the boxing brute of stone half hides his fist, the moon in the haunt of weight is a heavy ghost and the sun is a toastmaster, the punishing façades disguise their skill and fountains play before the parliament of standstill. You may go freely through the paved immense slowness, the architectural snow; admire the statues stiffened in the silence with No upon their lips and the heart at zero, until having made some circles you understand you are a pigmy held in a stone hand. No warmth is here, only an abstract good; your dead shall never bleed nor your love return; children ask here no gifts nor the hungry food. ... but now and then four walls of added men swing into symmetry, with a stone noise harden and echo at a statue's voice. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NOBODY'S LOOKIN' BUT DE OWL AND DE MOON (A NEGRO SERENADE) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON YOUNG LINCOLN by EDWIN MARKHAM LEAVES OF A MAGAZINE by MARIANNE MOORE THE GROSS CLINIC by CAROL FROST WAR IS KIND: 21 by STEPHEN CRANE THE PRAIRIE-GRASS DIVIDING by WALT WHITMAN ESCAPE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |