Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/80



POET: How crowded with the Rich were the jails, If the jails were a place for robbers.

TRUTH: Not jails, but Revolution.

POET:

The outcast birds of prey press against their cage.

TRUTH: A greater eagle will rend them.

POET: Oh, the poor of the cities, Which drain off into the slums As the lees of wine to the bottom of the vats.

TRUTH: It is a black wine and sits as poison in the cup.

POET:

I have seen the poor sitting naked in the city kennels,

Quarreling over the dirty water of the gutter.

I thought of all free things ; the large sky

And the clear rivers which eternally carry the sky

Beneath the whispering willows.

The brooks, which in Springtime

Fret their way down the hillside,

Through the roots of the silver-stemmed alders, which

stand expectant; The hillsides covered with lusset bracken, which will

soon be green with the new life. Clouds voyaging on unknown adventures, winds dancing

with the tall grasses which glisten; little chipmunks,

dragon flies and wrens. But before me was the black slime of the city's gutters Where the puny children, in play, too pathetical, Grasped at childhood which fluttered by, like a gray moth. If Genius be alight in one of these,

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