12
PARTISAN REVIEW
Past stage entrances and billiard parlors
Where bookies pass out business cigarettes, the thousand faces
Shift, vanish in a neon fog, glimpsed once and gone
Rise up anew upon the tide, new eyes the flood replaces.
And glimpsed among the lights' hallucination
Pleasure laughs out of a trombone 's mouth
Lifted in the Circle north or in the thunderous Square.
Hands grope to clasp her, but she eludes them there,
Though always they return to seck her vanishing face that soars
High above the Paramount clock or laughs from haberdashery
stores.
Slow metropolitan bells empty the late theatres,
The richest to their homes upon the Drive.
But midnight sends the clerks and stenos home
By the last trains and -nodding in their seats
In interborough slumbers, to dark and obscure streets
Where locals lurch and stop at silent stations.
Along deserted pavements where the thin moon leaks
Into quiet garbage cans, the feet awaken echoes.
Slip into the lock the hushed key quietly ...
Slow snores gargle from hot rooms ... here the bedroom
And the same bed ... neatly fold the clothes on chair ...
Pick out the office dress you'll wear ...
Wind the stopped clock ... the head sinks down in weariness,
Remembering the alarm, the muffied chorus of a song,
A face seen . . .then dark and sleep swallows the pursuit of
happiness.
Tourist, turn in-or will you go
When watchmen on their rounds
Flash searchlights into shuttered department stores?
The lean cat bounding from the fence slinks
To the pool of rainwater, eyes warily about, and drinks.
The crosstown streets run both ways to the rivers
And trolleys empty trundle to silent barns.
The ferry hoots and sails the Jersey side.
The pilot trains the splayed beam on the tide.
You go now, leaning on the rail, to ride
The quietest of waters, downstream,
Past slaughter house and ironworks, the cattle yards,
Past viaduct and park and amusement place,
