AS from unnumbered worlds away
I found myself My drowsy feet
Toil up the hill; the summer heat
Throbs through the vacant city gray.
I pause and listen : all is still –
The rattle of a distant cab
Blurs the pale night – and then, a stab,
An engine whistles, tense and shrill.
And leisurely along the street
A cat comes, mincingly alert,
Some feline roysterer or flirt,
In stealthy languor, smug, discreet!
And like a shrivelled wretch whose numb
Desire defies all sight and sound,
Sprawled drunkenly upon the ground.
The city lies defiant, dumb 1
For all this jaded world is mute –
Calm from a lovely sky, stars peep;
But stars and moonshine, they are cheap!
The town lies sullen, dissolute.
I wait – the silence echoes me
With old pure memories of dead faith
Revived as in the magic breath
Of an eternal ecstasy I ….
Then suddenly the darkness wins
The topmost windows of a flat;
The wailing of an amorous cat,
A tangle of wrangling larrikins,
And then the swish of running skirts,
Loud voices, cacklings, pattering hoofs,
A last quick scurry – and blank roofs
Recall the night, yet nothing hurts
Till clamouring from a hidden lane
A throng of women quarrelling breaks
The silence, and their discord makes
The night, the very sky, profane.
So the world withers. Exquisite
Balm drifting from some garden near.
Like half-heard music I half-hear –
They blur and deaden all of it!
(E J Rupert Atkinson)
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Based on Topics: World Poems, Night Poems, Woman Poems, Summer Poems, Silence Poems, Eternity Poems, Cities Poems, Running Poems, Garden Poems, Cats PoemsBased on Keywords: cab, half-heard, dissolute, deaden, feline, scurry, clamouring, quarrelling, drunkenly, half-hear, roysterer