FLOTSAM

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules; Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth; High-flung signs Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;

Girls in black Circling monotonously About the orange lights... Nothing to guess at...

Save the darkness above Crouching like a great cat. In the dim-lit square, Where dishevelled trees

Tustle with the wind — the wind like a scythe Mowing their last leaves — Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze — Pale oval arcs

Like ailing virgins, Each out of a halo circumscribed, Pallidly staring... Figures drift upon the benches

With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling — Slovenly figures like untied parcels, And papers wrapped about their knees Huddled one to the other,

Cringing to the wind — The sided wind, Leaving no breach untried... So many and all so still...

The fountain slobbering its stone basin Is louder than They — Flotsam of the five oceans Here on this raft of the world.

This old man's head Has found a woman's shoulder. The wind juggles with her shawl That flaps about them like a sail,

And splashes her red faded hair Over the salt stubble of his chin. A light foam is on his lips, As though dreams surged in him

Breaking and ebbing away... And the bare boughs shuffle above him And the twigs rattle like dice... She — diffused like a broken beetle —

Sprawls without grace, Her face gray as asphalt, Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges... Shadows ply about her mouth —

Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree, That dances above her its dance of dry bones.