It is a fog night out and the umbrellas are up and the collars of the raincoats-and all the steamboats up and down the Baltic sea have their lights out and the wheelsmen sober.
Here the telegrams come-one king goes and another-butter is costly: there is no butter to buy for our bread in Stockholm-and a little patty of butter costs more than all the crowns of Germany.
Let us go out in the fog, John, let us roll up our raincoat collars and go on the streets where men are sneering at the kings.
Where clay gleams yellow,Driving the blades of their shovelsDeeper and deeper for the new gas mainsWiping sweat off their facesWith red bandanasThe muckers work on .. pausing .. to pullTheir boots out of suckholes where they slosh.Of the twenty looking onTen murmer, “O, its a hell of a job,”Ten others, “Jesus, I wish I had…
I sit in a chair and read the newspapers.
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the darkAnd came out alive after all.If I pass the burial spot of NeroI shall say to the wind, ‘Well, well!’-I who have fiddled in a world on fire,I who have done so many stunts not worth doing.I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too.I want…
There are points of high silence–twiddling of thumbs is at an end–bailiffs near cuspidors take freshchews of tobacco and wait–and the clock has a chance for its ticking to be heard.A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds himself ready if the word is ‘Guilty’ to entermotion for a new trial, speaking in…
Remember me one of your lovers of dreams.
Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flitfrom zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters,scavengers.The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for usand a gang from over the river sang ragtime to a ukelele.The river mist marched up and down the Potomac, we huntedthe fog-swept Lincoln…
