No More Learning

ARRIVAL

Here is too swift a movement,
The rest is too still.

It is a red sea
Licking
The housefronts.

They quiver gently
From base to summit.
Ripples of impulse run through them,
Flattering resistance.

Soon they will fall;
Already smoke yearns upward.
Clouds of dust,
Crash of collapsing cubes.

I prefer deeper patience,
Monotony of stalled beasts.
O angle-builders,
Vainly have you prolonged your effort,
For I descend amid you,
Past rungs and slopes of curving slippery steel.

WALK

Sudden struggle for foothold on the pavement,
Familiar ascension.

I do not heed the city any more,
It has given me a duty to perform.
I pass along nonchalantly,
Insinuating myself into self-baffling movements.
Impalpable charm of back streets
In which I find myself:
Cool spaces filled with shadow.
Passers-by, white hammocks in the sunlight.

Bulging outcrush into old tumult;
Attainment, as of a narrow harbour,
Of some shop forgotten by traffic
With cool-corridored walls.

'BUS-TOP

Black shapes bending,
Taxicabs crush in the crowd.
The tops are each a shining square
Shuttles that steadily press through woolly fabric.

Drooping blossom,
Gas-standards over
Spray out jingling tumult
Of white-hot rays.

Monotonous domes of bowler-hats
Vibrate in the heat.

Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic,
Down the crowded street.
The tumult crouches over us,
Or suddenly drifts to one side.

TRANSPOSITION

I am blown like a leaf
Hither and thither.
The city about me
Resolves itself into sound of many voices,
Rustling and fluttering,
Leaves shaken by the breeze.

A million forces ignore me, I know not why,
I am drunken with it all.
Suddenly I feel an immense will
Stored up hitherto and unconscious till this instant.
Projecting my body
Across a street, in the face of all its traffic.

I dart and dash:
I do not know why I go.
These people watch me,
I yield them my adventure.

Lazily I lounge through labyrinthine corridors,
And with eyes suddenly altered,
I peer into an office I do not know,
And wonder at a startled face that penetrates my own.

Roses--pavement--
I will take all this city away with me--
People--uproar--the pavement jostling and flickering--
Women with incredible eyelids:
Dandies in spats:
Hard-faced throng discussing me--I know them all.
I will take them away with me,
I insistently rob them of their essence,
I must have it all before night,
To sing amid my green.

I glide out unobservant
In the midst of the traffic
Blown like a leaf
Hither and thither,
Till the city resolves itself into a clamour of voices,
Crying hollowly, like the wind rustling through the forest,
Against the frozen housefronts:
Lost in the glitter of a million movements.