A SALLOW waiter brings me six huge oysters. ... Gloom shutters up the sunset with a plague Of unpropitious twilight jagged asunder By flashlight demonstrations. @3Gee, what a peach Of a climate!@1 (Pardon slang: these sultry storms Afflict me with neurosis: rumbling thunder Shakes my belief in academic forms.) An oyster-coloured atmospheric rumpus Beats up to blot the sunken daylight's gildings. Against the looming cloud-bank, ivory-pale, Stand twenty-storied blocks of office buildings. Snatched upward on a gust, lost news-sheets sail Waif-like in lone arena of mid-air; Flapping like melancholy kites, they scare My gaze, a note of wildness in the scene. Out on the pattering side-walk people hurry For shelter, while the tempest swoops to scurry Across to Brooklyn. Bellying figures clutch At wide-brimmed hats and bend to meet the weather Alarmed for fresh-worn silks and flurried feather. Then hissing deluge splashes down to beat The darkly glistening flatness of the street. Only the cars nose on through rain-lashed twilight: Only the Sherman Statue, angel-guided, Maintains its mock-heroic martial gesture. A sallow waiter brings me beans and pork. Outside there's fury in the firmament. Ice-cream, of course, will follow; and I'm content. ... @3O Babylon! O Carthage! O New York!@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ASTRONOMY by ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN WHEN THE COWS COME HOME by AGNES E. MITCHELL IMAGES: 3 by RICHARD ALDINGTON A CHURCHYARD SOLILOQUY by HENRY ALFORD EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 5. BY LITTLE AND LITTLE by PHILIP AYRES THE SEAMSTRESS by HENRI BARBUSSE |