Classic Poem

At night a city narrows into a populous cafe.
At night the city of the dead becomes a shrunken framework
Into which pour mincingly those uninspired wanderers.
All are but apathetic game-automata now.
The foppish trimmings, the wasted spangle of ball and ballet —
Such hang in brazen melancholy on the walls,
Like the fond sketches of habitues bygone
Immortalizing bouts of myopic tenderness.
But here the guests are not warm students of the glass,
Nor do they dote upon the management
Or wage profoundly the cult of the bar-girl.
True enough, she is the Queen of Hearts herself.
But all who hover near the spotless varnish of this too-new bar —
As chaste as shop-new playing-cards not yet dealt out —
Are little more themselves than fugitives of the pack.
The lady is not, indeed, a stranger to them;
They have lain next her in those frigid intimacies
Through which cards doze till there's a game. The gentlemanly dominoes,
Brooding austerely on the dreadful chances turned
By one small gaming-table, are not less discreet.
But there's more spirit toward the entrance-way.
A whole set of chess-men is at earnest sport
To the tune of a giant gramophone
Whose eloquent, harmonic hand seems half-alive —
Great waxwork symbol reeling off the discs with practised virtue.
And the dance moves expertly over a real chess-board,
The dancers are the impeccable counters of the game.
They circulate in patient form, according to the rules.
Nor does the gramophone at any time run down.
The same hand that plays it winds it up at the slack moment.
And what's the point of all this? And does it last the night through?
You must understand that the cards are mere cards,
The dominoes have not really left their box,
The chess-men are but idling curios.
And the gramophone? I believe you are familiar with it:
It is the voice of all those races that time has not admitted
Into the lavish happenings and courses
That make life so full of interest, and death so foul.