Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/203

Rh Like a violent picture-puzzle Hiding a story that only ruins could reveal; Their straight lines, robbed of power, Meet in dwarfed rebellion. Sometimes they stand like vastly flattened faces Suffering ants to crawl In and out of their gaping mouths. Sometimes, in menial attitudes, They stand like Gothic platitudes Slipshodly carved in dark brown stone.

Tarnished solemnities of death Cast their transfigured hue on this avenue. The cool and indiscriminate glare Of sunlight seems to desecrate a tomb, And the racing people form A stream of accidental shadows. Hard noises strike one's face and make It numb with momentary reality, But the noiseless undertone returns And they change to unreal jests Made by death.

Apples race into appetites: The unswerving mechanism of the table Hurries through the last dish of supper. Then, an undulating interlude From people who have spent one pleasure, Distractedly juggling its aftermath And peering at new desires. One woman gazes at another While twitching murder shimmers in her eyes And skims across her face. Violets in a madman's scene, Suspended in the air, Are the eyes of her neighbor. And in between them sits the nervous man