The Town

Every road goes to the town.

Under the mist that the sun illumes,
She, where her terraces arise
And taper to the terraced skies,
Herself as from a dream exhumes.

Yonder glimmer looking down,
Bridges trimmed with iron lace,
Leaps in air and caught in space;
Blocks and columns like the head
Of a Gorgon gashed and red;
O'er the suburbs chimneys tower;
Gables open like a flower,
Under stagnant roofs that frown.

This is the many-tentacled town,
This is the flaming octopus,
The ossuary of all of us.
At the country's end she waits,
Feeling towards the old estates.

Meteoric gas-lamps line
Docks where tufted masts entwine;
Still they burn in noontides cold,
Monster eggs of viscous gold;
Never seems the sun to shine:
Mouth as it is of radiance, shut
By reeking smoke and driving smut.

A river of pitch and naphtha rolls
By wooden bridges, mortared moles;
And the raw whistles of the ships
Howl with fright in the fog that grips:
With a red signal light they peer
Towards the sea to which they steer.

Quays with clashing buffers groan;
Carts grate o'er the cobble-stone;
Cranes are cubes of shadow raising,
And slipping them in cellars blazing;
Bridges opening lift a vast
Gibbet till the ships have passed;
Letters of brass inscribe the world,
On roofs, and walls, and shop-fronts curled,
Face to face in battle massed.

Wheels file and file, the drosky plies,
Trains are rolling, effort flies;
And like a prow becalmed, the glare
Of gilded stations here and there;
And, from their platforms, ramified
Rails beneath the city glide,
In tunnels and in craters, whence
They storm in network flashing thin
Out into hubbub, dust, and din.

This is the many-tentacled town.

The street, with eddies tied like ropes
Around its squares, runs out and gropes
Along the city up and down,
And runs back far enlaced, and lined
With crowds inextricably twined,
Whose mad feet beat the flags beneath,
Whose eyes are filled with hate, whose teeth
Snatch at the time they cannot catch.

Dawn, eve, and night, lost in the press,
They welter in their weariness,
And cast to chance the bitter seed
Of labour that no gain can breed.
And dens black with inanity
Where poisoned sits the clerk and fasts;
And banks wide open to the blasts
Of the winds of their insanity.

Outside, in wadding of the damp,
Red lights in streaks, like burning rags,
Straggle from reeking lamp to lamp.
And alcohol goads life that lags.
The bar upon the causey masses
Its tabernacle of looking-glasses,
Reflecting drunken louts and hags.
To and fro a young girl passes,
And sells lights to the lolling men;
Debauch buys famine in her den;
And carnal lust ignited sallies
To dance to death in rotten alleys.

Lust roars and leaps from breast to breast,
Whipped to a rage uproarious,
To a blind crush of limbs in quest
Of the pleasure of gold and phosphorus;
And in and out wan women fare,
With sexual symbols in their hair.
The atmosphere of reeking dun
At times recedes towards the sun,
As though a loud cry called to Peace
To bid the deafening noises cease;
But all the city puffs and blows
With such a violent snort and flush,
That the dying seek in vain the hush
Of silence that eyes need to close.

Such is the day--and when the eves
With ebony hammers carve the skies,
Over the plain the city heaves
Its shimmer of colossal lies;
Her haunting, gilt desires arise;
Her radiance to the stars is cast;
She gathers her gas in golden sheaves;
Her rails are highways flying fast
To the mirage of happiness
That strength and fortune seem to bless;
Like a great army swell her walls;
And all the smoke she still sends down
Reaches the fields in radiant calls.

This is the many-tentacled town,
This is the burning octopus,
The ossuary of all of us,
The carcase with solemn candles lit.

And all the long ubiquitous
Roads and pathways reach to it.