Flotsam

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;     Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;     High-flung signs     Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;     Girls in black     Circling monotonously     About the orange lights...     Nothing to guess at...     Save the darkness above     Crouching like a great cat.     In the dim-lit square,     Where dishevelled trees     Tustle with the wind - the wind like a scythe     Mowing their last leaves -     Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze -     Pale oval arcs     Like ailing virgins,     Each out of a halo circumscribed,     Pallidly staring...     Figures drift upon the benches     With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling -     Slovenly figures like untied parcels,     And papers wrapped about their knees     Huddled one to the other,     Cringing to the wind -     The sided wind,     Leaving no breach untried...     So many and all so still...     The fountain slobbering its stone basin     Is louder than They -     Flotsam of the five oceans     Here on this raft of the world.     This old man's head     Has found a woman's shoulder.     The wind juggles with her shawl     That flaps about them like a sail,     And splashes her red faded hair     Over the salt stubble of his chin.     A light foam is on his lips,     As though dreams surged in him     Breaking and ebbing away...     And the bare boughs shuffle above him     And the twigs rattle like dice...     She - diffused like a broken beetle -     Sprawls without grace,     Her face gray as asphalt,     Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges...     Shadows ply about her mouth -     Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree,     That dances above her its dance of dry bones.     II     A uniformed front,     Paunched;     A glance like a blow,     The swing of an arm,     Verved, vigorous;     Boot-heels clanking     In metallic rhythm;     The blows of a baton,     Quick, staccato...      - There is a rustling along the benches     As of dried leaves raked over...     And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand,     Tucking the displaced paper about his knees.     Colder...     And a frost under foot,     Acid, corroding,     Eating through worn bootsoles.     Drab forms blur into greenish vapor.     Through boughs like cross-bones,     Pale arcs flare and shiver     Like lilies in a wind.     High over Broadway     A far-flung sign     Glitters in indigo darkness     And spurts again rhythmically,     Spraying great drops     Red as a hemorrhage.