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
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