Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
A
<div class="poem">
<p>To those who are interested in knowing what was met and mastered during the days we were out from San Francisco; to those who wish to learn some facts about automobiling in a section of this country where all kinds of climate and every condition of road may be encountered in a single day, the experiences of the short trip will satisfy.
</p>
</div> +
B
<div class="poem">
<p>Albert! <br />
Hey, Albert! <br />
Don't you play in dat road. <br />
You see dem trucks <br />
A-goin' by. <br />
One run ovah you <br />
An' you die. <br />
Albert, don't you play in dat road.
</p>
</div> +
C
<div class="poem">
<p>And yet these fine collapses are not lies<br />
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;<br />
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.<br />
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:<br />
What blame to us if the heart live on.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The game enforces smirks; but we have seen<br />
The moon in lonely alleys make<br />
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,<br />
And through all sound of gaiety and quest<br />
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>For we can still love the world, who find<br />
A famished kitten on the step, and know<br />
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,<br />
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>We make our meek adjustments,<br />
Contented with such random consolations<br />
As the wind deposits<br />
In slithered and too ample pockets.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>We will sidestep, and to the final smirk<br />
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb<br />
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,<br />
Facing the dull squint with what innocence<br />
And what surprise!
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Is this what we want?<br />
Have so many generations lived and died for this?<br />
There have been Crusades, persecutions, wars, and majestic arts,<br />
There have been murders and passions and horrors since man was in the jungle...<br />
What was this blood-toll for?<br />
Just so that everybody could have a full belly and be well-mannered?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>But let us not fool ourselves:<br />
This civilization is mostly varnish very thinly laid on...<br />
Take any newspaper any morning: scan through it...<br />
Rape, murder, villany, and picking and stealing:<br />
The mob that tore a negro to pieces, the men that ravished a young girl:<br />
The safe-blowing gang and the fat cowardly promoter who stole people’s savings...<br />
Just scan it through: this news of civilization...
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Let us not be afraid of ourselves, but face ourselves and confess what we are:<br />
Let us go backward a while that we may go forward:<br />
This is an excellent age for insurrection, revolt, and the reddest of revolutions...
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Civilization!<br />
Everybody kind and gentle, and men giving up<br />
their seats in the car for the women...<br />
What an ideal!<br />
How bracing!
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Away then, with soft ideals:<br />
Brace yourself with bitterness:<br />
A drink of that biting liquor, the Truth...
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Voices of dollars</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> And drops of blood</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . . . .</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Voices of broken hearts,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . Voices singing, singing,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> . . Silver voices, singing,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Softer than the stars,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Softer than the mist.</span>
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Now. . .<br />
. . Only stars and mist<br />
A lonely policeman,<br />
Two cabaret dancers,<br />
Stars and mist again,<br />
No more feet or wheels,<br />
No more dust and wagons.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Dust of the feet<br />
And dust of the wheels,<br />
Wagons and people going,<br />
All day feet and wheels.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun's bonnet.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>New neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Dust and the thundering trucks won—the barrages of the street wheels and the lawless wind took their way—was it five weeks or six the little mother, the new neighbors, battled and then took away the white prayers in the windows?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels whirled dust—there was dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire— dust of police and fire wagons—dust of the winds that circled at midnights and noon listening to no prayers.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>"O mother, I know the heart of you," I sang passing the rim of a nun's bonnet—O white curtains—and people clean as the prayers of Jesus here in the faded ramshackle at Congress and Green.
</p>
</div> +
