POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
THOUGHTS WHILE WALKING
A steel hush freezes the trees—
It is my mind stretched to stiff lace
And draped on high, wide thoughts.
My soul is a large sapless park,
And people walk on it, as they do on the park before me.
They numb my levelness with dumb feet—
Yet I cannot even hate them.
STREETS
Rows of exact, streaked faces,
Each afraid to be unlike the other,
Recalling the rows of people I have bowed to.
(O bare yellow houses, let me batter different shapes into you
With cracked knuckles!)
Glass globes on signs and in shops, with a light not their own,
Recalling the small souls that festoon the streets of my remembrance.
(Oh, let me place you between large thumbs
And break you to showers of galling splinters and sparks.)
[74]
