NEARSIGHT
When Spruggles takes his glasses off, he sees.
Globular people strut like walking trees
Through a strange, oozy mist that melts to air
Some thirty feet before his blinking stare
And all the edgy corners of the streets
Are puffed and bulged like bottle-’scaped Afreets!
—There are no definitions. All is dim.
A yellowy underworld, where trolleys swim
Enormous as a magic, and the least
Rice-powdered shop-girl, like a vesting priest
Assumes estranged beauty, cloudy-far,
Desirous as a water-mirrored star.
—The houses are cartoons—So is his wife—
He thinks “Grotesque” would be the word for Life.