Classic Poem

Steps, worn by funerals of the poor,
Pillars, in solitary squalor—
Unwashed stone shoulders
Heavy as a man with the sweat
Of ten thousand August days.
Mouth of death, open, unbreathing, cold, wet,
—O flesh, hug closer to the bone!

Eggshells pass and repass,
A rosary of faces.
For them white snow-flakes hide
The vanishing footprints of Judas,
And Herod lounges in a taxi-cab—
His choir the cough from frost-stabbed breasts.
For them rags on writhing gargoyles
Are worn to sell a penny-blessing.

Lazarus, Lazarus,
There's something clean in ashes
Something true in pain!
But here was left a spiked boot
From a wandering giant foot,
Here its heel was caught
And men yet gape to see a grave
Hold such flesh and bone.