Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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P
<div class="poem">
<p>Ef you want lost póliceman,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Go dere Sunday night,</span><br />
Where you'll see them, every one<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Lookin' smart an' bright :</span><br />
Policeman of every rank,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Rural ones an' all,</span><br />
In de bar or on de bank,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Each one in them sall.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>When you want hear coarsest jokes<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Passin' rude an' vile,</span><br />
Want to see de Kingston blokes,—<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Go up dere awhile:</span><br />
When you want hear murderin'<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> On de piano,</span><br />
An' all sorts o' drunken din,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Papine you mus' go.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>When you want a pleasant drive,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Tek Hope Gardens line;</span><br />
I can tell you, man alive,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> It is jolly fine:</span><br />
Ef you want to feel de fun,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> You mus' only wait</span><br />
Until when you're comin' do'n<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> An' de tram is late.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>When you want meet a surprise,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Tek de Papine track;</span><br />
Dere some things will meet you' eyes<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Mek you tu'n you' bac:</span><br />
When you want to see mankind<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Of "class "family</span><br />
In a way degra' them mind,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Go 'p deh, you will see.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>When you want to be jus' broke,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Ride up wid your chum,</span><br />
Buy de best cigars to smoke<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> An' Finzi old rum:</span><br />
Stagger roun' de sort o' square<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> On to Fong Kin bar ;</span><br />
Keep as much strengt' dat can bear<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> You do'n in de car.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>When you want know Sunday bright,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Tek a run up deh</span><br />
When 'bout eight o'clock at night<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Things are extra gay :</span><br />
Ef you want to see it cram',<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Wait tell night is dark,</span><br />
An' beneat' your breat' you'll damn<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Coney Island Park.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Policeman on plain clo'es pass,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Also dismissed ones;</span><br />
See them standin' in a mass,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Talkin' 'bout them plans:</span><br />
Policeman "struck off de strengt'<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> Physical unfit,"</span><br />
Hear them chattin' dere at lengt'<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> 'Bout a diffran' kit.</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>In these noncommittal, personal-impersonal expressions of appearance,<br />
the eye knows what to skip;<br />
the physiognomy of conduct must not reveal the skeleton;<br />
“a setting must not have the air of being one,”<br />
yet with X-ray-like inquisitive intensity upon it, the surfaces go back;<br />
the interfering fringes of expression are but a stain on what stands out,<br />
there is neither up nor down to it;<br />
we see the exterior and the fundamental structure—<br />
captains of armies, cooks, carpenters,<br />
cutlers, gamesters, surgeons and armorers,<br />
lapidaries, silkmen, glovers, fiddlers and ballad singers,<br />
sextons of churches, dyers of black cloth, hostlers and chimney-sweeps,<br />
queens, countesses, ladies, emperors, travelers and mariners,<br />
dukes, princes and gentlemen, <br />
in their respective places—<br />
camps, forges and battlefields,<br />
conventions, oratories and wardrobes,<br />
dens, deserts, railway stations, asylums and places where engines are made,<br />
shops, prisons, brickyards and altars of churches—<br />
in magnificent places clean and decent,<br />
castles, palaces, dining halls, theaters and imperial audience chambers.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>and Bluebeard’s Tower above the coral reefs,<br />
the magic mousetrap closing on all points of the compass,<br />
capping like petrified surf the furious azure of the bay,<br />
where there is no dust, and life is like a lemon leaf,<br />
a green piece of tough translucent parchment, <br />
where the crimson, the copper, and the Chinese vermilion of the poincianas<br />
set fire to the masonry and turquoise blues refute the clock;<br />
this dungeon with odd notions of hospitality,<br />
with its “chessmen carved out of moonstones,”<br />
its mockingbirds, fringed lilies, and hibiscus,<br />
its black butterflies with blue half circles on their wings,<br />
tan goats with onyx ears, its lizards glittering and without thickness,
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>the highway hid by fir trees in rhododendron twenty feet deep, <br />
the peacocks, hand-forged gates, old Persian velvet,<br />
roses outlined in pale black on an ivory ground,<br />
the pierced iron shadows of the cedars,<br />
Chinese carved glass, old Waterford, lettered ladies;<br />
landscape gardening twisted into permanence;
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The palace furniture, so old-fashioned, so old-fashionable;<br />
Sèvres china and the fireplace dogs—<br />
bronze dromios with pointed ears, as obsolete as pugs;<br />
one has one’s preferences in the matter of bad furniture,<br />
and this is not one’s choice,
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>like splashes of fire and silver on the pierced turquoise of the lattices<br />
and the acacia-like lady shivering at the touch of a hand,<br />
lost in a small collision of the orchids—<br />
dyed quicksilver let fall<br />
to disappear like an obedient chameleon in fifty shades of mauve and amethyst.<br />
Here where the mind of this establishment has come to the conclusion <br />
that it would be impossible to revolve about oneself too much,<br />
sophistication has, “like an escalator,” “cut the nerve of progress.”
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The vast indestructible necropolis<br />
of composite Yawman-Erbe separable units;<br />
the steel, the oak, the glass, the Poor Richard publications<br />
containing the public secrets of efficiency<br />
on paper so thin that “one thousand four hundred and twenty pages make one inch,”<br />
exclaiming, so to speak, When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use;
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>They answer one’s questions, <br />
a deal table compact with the wall; <br />
in this dried bone of arrangement<br />
one’s “natural promptness” is compressed, not crowded out;<br />
one’s style is not lost in such simplicity.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>straight lines over such great distances as one finds in Utah or in Texas,<br />
where people do not have to be told<br />
that a good brake is as important as a good motor; <br />
where by means of extra sense-cells in the skin<br />
they can, like trout, smell what is coming—<br />
those cool sirs with the explicit sensory apparatus of common sense,<br />
who know the exact distance between two points as the crow flies;<br />
there is something attractive about a mind that moves in a straight line—<br />
the municipal bat roost of mosquito warfare; <br />
the American string quartet;<br />
these are questions more than answers,
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>What nudity is beautiful as this<br />
Obedient monster purring at its toil;<br />
These naked iron muscles dripping oil<br />
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss.<br />
This long and shining flank of metal is<br />
Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil;<br />
While this vast engine that could rend the soil<br />
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>It does not vent its loathing, does not turn<br />
Upon its makers with destroying hate.<br />
It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn<br />
Its master's bread and laughs to see this great<br />
Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn,<br />
Become the slave of what his slaves create.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>It's a lean car… a long-legged dog of a car… a gray-ghost eagle car.<br />
The feet of it eat the dirt of a road… the wings of it eat the hills.<br />
Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep.<br />
It is in Danny's life and runs in the blood of him… a lean gray-ghost car.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>At dusk we feel our way along the wharf<br />
That juts into the harbor: anchored ships<br />
With lifting prow and slowly rocking mast<br />
Ink out their profiles; fishing dories scull<br />
With muffled lamps that glimmer through the spray;<br />
We hear the water plash among the piers<br />
Rotted with moss, long after sunset stay<br />
To watch the dim sky-changes ripple down<br />
The length of quiet ocean to our feet<br />
Till on the sea rim rising like a world<br />
Bigger than ours, and laying bare the ships<br />
In shadowy stillness, swells the yellow moon.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Blood of their blood who shaped these sloping roofs<br />
And low arched doorways, laid the cobble stones<br />
Not meant for motors,—you and I rejoice<br />
When roof and spire sink deep into the night<br />
And all the little streets reach out their arms<br />
To be received into the salt-drenched dark.<br />
Then Provincetown comes to her own again,<br />
Draws round her like a cloak that shelters her<br />
From too swift changes of the passing years<br />
The dunes, the sea, the silent hilltop grounds<br />
Where solemn groups of leaning headstones hold<br />
Perpetual reunion of her dead.
</p>
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