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.