John Gould Fletcher (1886-1950)

From Dominant City, 1911-1912 (1913)

• Tragic Night
• Triumphant Night
• The Hour of Peace
• From the Night to the Dawn
• Back Streets
• The Banners

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  Tragic Night

  Rain, and a glare of lamps set in the rain,
  Where seekers for numb brains and deadened wills
  Stagger like helpless idiots through the pain
  Of vain remembrance of increasing ills.
  The dazzle of light in the darkness thickly fills
  The breadth of street with long and snake-like stain
  Of false gold, which the weak sight blinds and kills,
  While through it all come slipping by amain,
  Like vast black birds of prey with eyes aglow,
  The automobiles, mid shrieks and howls of lust;
  No deeper tragedy the earth can know
  Than this, its night of pain and rain and rust,
  Where death is only death and nothingness.

  Triumphant Night

  As once I wandered lonely in the night,
  Upon some grey and grimy street belated,
  I saw a sad man and a woman white,
  Clasped in a doorway low, unconsecrated.
  And they were parting, for their sobs came thick
  Across the street to where I wandered, deeming
  That all the world with ugliness was sick,
  And that life held no moments worth esteeming.
  Vision of the night, you mocked me then
  With sudden floods of beauty, power and glory!
  I saw the paltry, weak desires of men
  Rise from our hearts, and conquer song and story,
  And flout the idle Gods who do not love us,
  And sweep away the swarm of stars above us.

  The Hour of Peace

  

  It is the hour when all is dark and still;
  When long despair, brief hope, alike resign
  Their ancient dominance of human will;
  When life no longer to the far sea-line
  Bends its gray sails, worn with the winds of ill,
  Seeking those unseen lands beyond the brine
  Which never, through the bitter foam and chill,
  A man shall mark, and marvel as they shine;
  It is the hour of silence. No one cares
  To think of toil now, asking, "What is done
  By all our effort endlessly onstreaming?"
  For we are sick of mocking, sly despairs,
  And we would rest as if all time were gone,
  Filling the hour of peace with foolish dreaming.

  From the Night to the Dawn

  

  In every night some haggard hours there are
  Whose passing is unnoted, save by those
  Unconquered by dim slumber and her shows;
  The wretched and the houseless near and far,
  And those for whom the night cannot unbar
  The common gate to her divine repose,
  Whose nerves are torn by living and its woes,
  Until they sink in some melee of war.
  These know and these alone the secret things:
  The mysteries which those who see must die:
  The silent spaces of which no one sings:
  The grey death-minutes fading, till on high
  Aloft there flash the sudden glorious wings
  Of dawn and fill with light the hollow sky.

  Back Streets

  

  You that have gazed long on the city s splendour,
  Behold its life, how thick and red it runs!
  From dawn to dusk and on through countless suns,
  Self-spending, self-creating, fixed, untender,
  Coarse, deathless, changeless! Do you homage render
  To that which with its power the spirit stuns:
  And will, until all things are as they once
  Were, in the grip of Death, the sole amender.
  Thousands of years ago thus in the grime
  Life struggled, as it struggles on to-day,
  As it must struggle till its latest scene:
  No change shall ever be except in time,
  Until all things as dreams are swept away,
  And the earth is as if it ne'er had been.

  The Banners

  

  Like ruddy or tawny masses of torn flame,
  Over the whirlpool seething in agony
  Defiantly they flap and shake on high
  The electricity of life, that, ever the same,
  Fulminates in the city's pain and shame,
  And streams in smoke-clouds towards the ashen sky;
  A roaring chaos of wrath and mystery
  Fashioned to pleasure That-Which-Has-No Name:
  Banners on banners heavily everywhere,
  Soul-oriflammes of blood and hate and lust,
  Burst flickering through the abysms of the air.
  Leap, condors chained; it is our will; you must.
  And scream our tragedy even to those dim
  Veils of the dawn, where red stars flicker grim!