Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE DEMONS OF THE CITIES, by GEORG HEYM


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DEMONS OF THE CITIES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: They wander through the cities night enshrouds
Last Line: About their hooves, where flint-struck fires rise.
Subject(s): Cities; Urban Life


They wander through the cities night enshrouds:
The cities cower, black, beneath their feet.
Upon their chins like sailors' beards the clouds
Are black with curling smoke and sooty sleet.

On seas of houses their long shadow sways
And snuffs ranked street-lamps out, as with a blow.
Upon the pavement, thick as fog, it weighs,
And gropes from house to house, solid and slow.

With one foot planted on a city square,
The other knee upon a tower, they stand,
And where the black rain falls they rear, with blare
Of quickened Pan's-pipes in a cloud-stormed land.

About their feet circles a ritornelle
With the sad music of the city's sea,
Like a great burying-song. The shrill tones swell
And rumble in the darkness, changefully.

They wander to the stream that, dark and wide,
As a bright reptile with gold-spotted back,
Turns in the lanterned dark from side to side
In its sad dance, while heaven's stare is black.

They lean upon the bridge, darkly agog,
And thrust their hands among the crowds that pass,
Like fauns who perch above a meadow bog
And plunge lean arms into the miry mass.

Now one stands up. He hangs a mask of gloom
Upon the white-cheeked moon. The night, like lead
From the dun heavens, settles as a doom
On houses into pitted darkness fled.

The shoulders of the cities crack. A gleam
Of fire from a roof burst open flies
Into the air. Big-boned, on the top beam
They sit and scream like cats against the skies.

A little room with glimmering shadows billows
Where one in labor shrieks her agony.
Her body lifts gigantic from the pillows.
And the huge devils stand about to see.

She clutches, shaking, at her torture-bed.
With her long shuddering cry the chamber heaves.
Now the fruit comes. Her womb gapes long and red,
And bleeding, for the child's last passage cleaves.

The devils' necks grow like giraffes'. The child
Is born without a head. The mother moans
And holds it. On her back, clammy and wild,
The frog-fingers of fear play, as she swoons.

But vast as giants now the demons loom.
Their horns in fury gore the bleeding skies.
An earthquake thunders in the cities' womb
About their hooves, where flint-struck fires rise.





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