Faces

A late snow beats     With cold white fists upon the tenements -     Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters,     Like tall old slatterns     Pulling aprons about their heads.     Lights slanting out of Mott Street     Gibber out,     Or dribble through bar-room slits,     Anonymous shapes     Conniving behind shuttered panes     Caper and disappear...     Where the Bowery     Is throbbing like a fistula     Back of her ice-scabbed fronts.     Livid faces     Glimmer in furtive doorways,     Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys,     Smears of faces like muddied beads,     Making a ghastly rosary     The night mumbles over     And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper...     Patrolling arcs     Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line     Stalk them as they pass,     Silent as though accouched of the darkness,     And the wind noses among them,              Like a skunk     That roots about the heart...     Colder:     And the Elevated slams upon the silence     Like a ponderous door.     Then all is still again,     Save for the wind fumbling over     The emptily swaying faces -     The wind rummaging     Like an old Jew...     Faces in glimmering rows...     (No sign of the abject life -     Not even a blasphemy...)     But the spindle legs keep time     To a limping rhythm,     And the shadows twitch upon the snow              Convulsively -     As though death played     With some ungainly dolls.