No More Learning

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.

PERIPETEIA

I can no longer find a place for myself:
I go.

There are too many things to detain me,
But the force behind is reckless.

Noise, uproar, movement
Slide me outwards,
Black sleet shivering
Down red walls.

In thick jungles of green, this gyration,
My centrifugal folly,
Through roaring dust and futility spattered,
Will find its own repose.