Classic Poem

I

Greeting the dawn,
A shift of rubber workers presses down
South Main.
With the stubbornness of muddy water

It dwindles at each cross-line
Until you feel the weight of many cars
North-bound, and East and West,
Absorbing and conveying weariness, —
Rumbling over the hills.

Akron, " high place " —
A bunch of smoke-ridden hills
Among rolling Ohio hills.

The dark-skinned Greeks grin at each other
in the streets and alleys.
The Greek grins and fights with the Swede, —
And the Fjords and the Aegean are remembered.

The plough, the sword,
The trowel, — and the monkey wrench!
O City, your axles need not the oil of song.
I will whisper words to myself
And put them in my pockets.
I will go and pitch quoits with old men
In the dust of a road.

II

And some of them " will be Americans " ,
Using the latest ice-box and buying Fords;
And others, —

I remember one Sunday noon,
Harry and I, " the gentlemen " , — seated around
A table of raisin-jack and wine, our host
Setting down a glass and saying, —

" One month, — I go back rich.
I ride black horse. ... Have many sheep. "
And his wife, like a mountain, coming in
With four tiny black-eyed girls around her
Twinkling like little Christmas trees.

And some Sunday fiddlers,
Roumanian business men,
Played ragtime and dances before the door,
And we overpayed them because we felt like it.

III

Pull down the hotel counterpane
And hitch yourself up to your book.
" Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeleine's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ... "

" Connais tu le pays ...? "

Your mother sang that in a stuffy parlour
One summer day in a little town
Where you had started to grow.
And you were outside as soon as you
Could get away from the company
To find the only rose on the bush
In the front yard. . . . . . .

But look up, Porphyro, — your toes
Are ridiculously tapping
The spindles at the foot of the bed.

The stars are drowned in a slow rain,
And a hash of noises is slung up from the street.
You ought, really, to try to sleep,
Even though, in this town, poetry's a
Bedroom occupation.