The sunlight, like Rouault, draws a line At everything, but shadow seems as real As its object -- stricter, even, to its form Than the wasted color of the worn stone. The sea fringes a desert. Travellers come Where the wave repeats itself in endless promise. On the uplands are the shabby goats, lean pigs, And the poor in their doorways, watching the roads Where the tourists flash past. The peasant is eclipsed By the solar procession of the rich and bored Who find the poor fearsome, but the blackening jail And American motels enclosed in white walls Romantic. Disturbing, though, that black-and-white Life. The cripple who rasps along the street Like nails on a slate lines all the tourist ear With cries as real and shadowy as foreign fear. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FLIRT by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES THE WIND (2) by EMILY DICKINSON THE VOICE OF SPRING by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY: 8. BRENNBAUM by EZRA POUND MONNA INNOMINATA, A SONNET OF SONNETS: 5 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI |