Boarding-House Hall

First the stuffy upholstered smell of the chairs began
To puff a few sighs of dust, and the sticky-varnished
Reek of the cheap worn wood had a verse to scan
About Love and Death and Beauty, fly-spotted and tarnished.

“I never liked her at all!” said a green glass bowl,
And a whiff of anger whitened the broken plaster,
“Her eyes were too big!” cried a smell with paws like a mole.
“She was slinky,” the pinks spoke. “Thin,” creaked a broken castor.

“She was greedy. She never loved him. She powdered her nose.”
Pale-calm as a specter’s gem in the shadow-playtime,
The ghost of the perfume hid in her hair arose
And shook dark wealth from its robes and possessed the daytime.

Like a scented tree of Egypt it burgeoned above,
For a space of quiet like myrrh, for the flash of a feather....
They were still, who had seen the dead, happy face of Love ...
—And the smells of the onions trooped up the stairs together.