Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar
Where on the tables chattering-white
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.
Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces in their wiles –
Sometimes they splash like water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).
The conversation loud and bright
Seems spinal bars of shunting light
In firework-spurting greenery.
O complicate machinery
For building Babel, iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane
In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!
Outside the bar where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat –
A concertina’s glycerine
Exudes, and mirrors in the green
Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.
(Dame Edith Sitwell)
More Poetry from Dame Edith Sitwell:
Dame Edith Sitwell Poems based on Topics: Light, Hair, Soul, People, Smiling- Heart And Mind (Dame Edith Sitwell Poems)
- Solo For Ear-Trumpet (Dame Edith Sitwell Poems)
- The Lady With The Sewing-Machi (Dame Edith Sitwell Poems)
- Eventail (Dame Edith Sitwell Poems)
- The Dancers: (During A Great Battle, 1916) (Dame Edith Sitwell Poems)
- Interlude (Dame Edith Sitwell Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Light Poems, Soul Poems, Smiling Poems, Hair Poems, People PoemsBased on Keywords: greenery, muslin, jangling, spinal, concertina, mutability, complicate, exudes, shunting, glucose, glycerine