SPRING

A spring wind on the Bowery,

Blowing the fluff of night shelters

Off bedraggled garments,

And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor

Like lewd growths.

Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other,

One — with a choir-boy's face

Twits me as I pass...

The word, like a muddied drop,

Seems to roll over and not out of

The bowed lips,

Yet dewy red

And sweetly immature.

People sniff the air with an upward look —

Even the mite of a girl

Who never plays...

Her mother smiles at her

With eyes like vacant lots

Rimming vistas of mean streets

And endless washing days...

Yet with sun on the lines

And a drying breeze.

The old candy woman

Shivers in the young wind.

Her eyes — littered with memories

Like ancient garrets,

Or dusty unaired rooms where someone died —

Ask nothing of the spring.

But a pale pink dream

Trembles about this young girl's body,

Draping it like a glowing aura.

She gloats in a mirror

Over her gaudy hat,

With its flower God never thought of...

And the dream, unrestrained,

Floats about the loins of a soldier,

Where it quivers a moment,

Warming to a crimson

Like the scarf of a toreador...

But the delicate gossamer breaks at his contact

And recoils to her in strands of shattered rose.