The Butcher's Stall

Hard by the docks, soon as the shadows fold
The dizzy mansion-fronts that soar aloft,
When eyes of lamps are burning soft,
The shy, dark quarter lights again its old
Allurement of red vice and gold.

Women, blocks of heaped, blown meat,
Stand on low thresholds down the narrow street,
Calling to every man that passes;
Behind them, at the end of corridors,
Shine fires, a curtain stirs
And gives a glimpse of masses
Of mad and naked flesh in looking-glasses.
Hard by the docks.
The street upon the left is ended by
A tangle of high masts and shrouds that blocks
A sheet of sky;
Upon the right a net of grovelling alleys
Falls from the town--and here the black crowd rallies
To reel to rotten revelry.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,
Time out of mind erected on the frontiers
Of the city and the sea.

Far-sailing melancholy mariners
Who, wet with spray, through grey mists peer,
Cradled among the rigging cabin-boys, and they who steer
Hallucinated by the blue eyes of the vast sea-spaces,
All dream of it, evoke it when the evening falls;
Their raw desire to madness galls;
The wind's soft kisses hover on their faces;
The wave awakens rolling images of soft embraces;
And their two arms implore,
Stretched in a frantic cry towards the shore.

And they of offices and shops, the city tribes,
Merchants precise, keen reckoners, haggard scribes,
Who sell their brains for hire, and tame their brows,
When the keys of desks are hanging on the wall,
Feel the same galling rut at even-fall,
And run like hunted dogs to the carouse.
Out of the depths of dusk come their dark flocks,
And in their hearts debauch so rudely shocks
Their ingrained greed and old accustomed care,
That they are racked and ruined by despair.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,
Time out of mind erected on the frontiers
Of the city and the sea.

Come from what far sea-isles or pestilent parts?
Come from what feverish or methodic marts?
Their eyes are filled with bitter, cunning hate,
They fight their instincts that they cannot sate;
Around red females who befool them, they
Herd frenzied till the dawn of sober day.
The panelling is fiery with lewd art;
Out of the wall nitescent knick-knacks dart;
Fat Bacchuses and leaping satyrs in
Wan mirrors freeze an unremitting grin;
Flowers sicken on the gaming-tables where
The warming bowls twist fire of light blue hair;
A pot of paint curds on an etagere;
A cat is catching flies on cushioned seats;
A drunkard lolls asleep on yielding plush,
And women come, and o'er him bending, brush
His closed, red lids with their enormous teats.

And women with spent loins and sleeping croups
Are piled on sofas and arm-chairs in groups,
With sodden flesh grown vague, and black and blue
With the first trampling of the evening's crew.
One of them slides a gold coin in her stocking;
Another yawns, and some their knees are rocking;
Others by bacchanalia worn out,
Feeling old age, and, sniffing them, Death's snout,
Stare with wide-open eyes, torches extinct,
And smooth their legs with hands together linked.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,
Time out of mind erected on the frontiers
Of the city and the sea.

According to the jingle of the purses
The women mingle promises with curses;
A tranquil cynicism, a tired pleasure
Is meted duly to the money's measure.

The kiss grows weary, and the game grows tame.
Often when fist with fist together clashes,
In the wind of oaths and insults still the same,
Some gaiety out of the blasphemy flashes,

But soon sinks, and you hear,
In the silence dank and drear,
A halting steeple near
Sounding, sick with pity,
In the darkness over the city.

Yet in those months by festivals sanctified,
St. Peter in summer, in winter Christmastide,
The ancient quarter of dirt and light
Soars up to sin and pounces on its joys,
Fermenting with wild songs and boisterous noise
Window by window, flight by flight,
With vice the house-fronts glow
Down from the garret to the grids below.
Everywhere rage roars, and couples heats.
In the great hall to which the sailors throng,
Pushing some jester of the streets,
Convulsed in obscene mimicry, along,
The wines of foam and gold leap from their sheath;
Women fall underneath
Mad, brawling drunkards; loosened ruts
Flame, arms unite, and body body butts;
Nothing is seen but instincts slaked and lit afresh,
Breasts offered, bellies taken, and the fire
Of haggard eyes in sheaves of brandished flesh.

The frenzy climbs, and sinks to rise still higher,
Rolls like exasperated tides,
And backwards glides,
Until the moment when dawn fills the port,
And Death, tired of the sport,
Back to ships and homesteads sweeps and harries
The limp debauch and human weed
That on the pavement tarries.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,
Wherein Crime plants his knives that bleed,
Where lightning madness stains
Foreheads with rotting pains,
Time out of mind erected on the frontiers that feed
The city and the sea.