POEMS
Who then creep out, unshaken
By Roman wheels, to play,
When he is gone who could waken
The Sabbath gigantic causeway?
-'Ce ne sont pas des hommes, helas!
Ce ne sont pas des femmes;'
'Pigeons on the grass, alas!'
'Ce sont des americains.'
-But riV'ho is it this light sun breeds
From what has died, to Sunday shoes,
To discontent, here in the clean
North-warehouse-shadow's mortuary dews?
-The harmless
keres
of him,
Infesting the bones he left;
His powerhouses shut and dim ...
We are free when we are bereft,
Whom neither the iron derrick's
Impotency
Nor the black smokestacks'
Claim of the sky
Nor our brief shadows'
Confluence, in the still doorway
(And under the consenting death of gastanks)
Can satisfy or destroy.
23
Francis Fergusson
