Thousands of faces break
To one word called dramatic:
Thousands of faces attain
An over-worked, realistic
Clash of stupidities.
At first the mob spreads out
Its animated fights of lines—
Butcher with a face one degree
Removed from the dead flesh which he cuts;
Socialist whose face rebukes
The cry for justice tumbling from his lips;
Five professors of English
Whose faces are essentially
School-boys coerced by erudition;
Bank-clerk with a face
Where curiosity
Weakly contends against
The shrewd frown brought by counting slips of money;
Girls whose first twenty years
Have merely shown them the exact
Shade of pouting necessary
For the gain of price-marked objects;
Boys with cocksure faces
Where an awkward lyric
Wins the vitriol of civilization;
Shop-girl whose face is like
The faint beginning of a courtezan
Prisoned by the trance of unsought labor;
Wealthy man whose face
Holds a courteous, bored
Reply to traces of imagination;
Housewife with a round
Face where dying disappointments
Old men with faces where a psychic doubt
Invades the ruins of noses, lips, and eyes
And dreams of better structures;
Old woman with a face
Like a bashful rag-picker
Rescuing bits of cast-off deviltries
Beneath the ebbing light of eyes.
Stare upon these faces,
With emotion cooled by every
Bantering of thought,
And they fade to one disorganized
Defeat that craves the smooth
Lubrications of music.
The mob upon this street
Reiterates one shout:
“We want lyrics! Give us lyrics!”
Space, and stars, and conscious thought
Stand above the house-tops of this street;
Look down with frowning interest;
Regard the implacable enemy.