格温多林。布鲁克斯

在这里你会发现长诗穷人的爱人诗人格温多林·布鲁克斯

穷人的爱人

的到来。妇女改良协会的女士们下午来了,晚霞斜照在稀释了的金条上,穿过林荫大道,炫耀着高傲的、缝着缝的、带着怜悯和谋杀暗示的面孔,这里,那里,插嘴,都是深沉而温文尔雅的,在恐惧的天真上涂上粉红色的颜料;小心翼翼地走过大厅。用刀切割,用他们最温柔的关怀,用他们的爱,如此野蛮的公平。他们的母亲教导他们:你最好不要残忍!你最好不要朝鹪鹩扔石头!在这里,他们又吻又宠,又放肆地侵犯着天真的本性。她们丰满、光滑、娇嫩、健康、五十来岁、容光焕发,都是甜蜜的流产,暗示着丰硕的果实,判断一下,是时候让五十来岁的手指在更可爱的事业平面下感受一下了。复活。用乳白色的寒意滋润 To be a random hitching post or plush. To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem. Their guild is giving money to the poor. The worthy poor. The very very worthy And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy? Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish Is--something less than derelict or dull. Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze! God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold! The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down. But it's all so bad! and entirely too much for them. The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans, Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains, The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they're told, Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs. The soil that looks the soil of centuries. And for that matter the general oldness. Old Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old. Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe. Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic, There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no Unkillable infirmity of such A tasteful turn as lately they have left, Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars Must presently restore them. When they're done With dullards and distortions of this fistic Patience of the poor and put-upon. They've never seen such a make-do-ness as Newspaper rugs before! In this, this "flat," Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ), Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon. Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look, In horror, behind a substantial citizeness Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart. Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door. All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft- Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt. Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost. But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . . They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra, Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks, Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin "hangings," Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend, When suitable, the nice Art Institute; Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind. Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers So old old, what shall flatter the desolate? Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames And, again, the porridges of the underslung And children children children. Heavens! That Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment League agree it will be better To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies, To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring Bells elsetime, better presently to cater To no more Possibilities, to get Away. Perhaps the money can be posted. Perhaps they two may choose another Slum! Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!-- Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested. Keeping their scented bodies in the center Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall, They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall, Are off at what they manage of a canter, And, resuming all the clues of what they were, Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.