John Gould Fletcher

From “Chicago Notes”

AT the edge of a beautiful gulf of gloom and stillness

The city rises—

Glittering with millions of spangles

Seen between the dull smoke of the trains,

That struggle and tug laboriously

And bump empty freight-cars into each other

With a noise like surf collapsing.

Beyond there is windy darkness—

One or two lights low down

Seemingly blurred by mist,

And waterish stars;

For the wind is bringing rain

To stream down the spangled faces,

And make the light-terraces melt together

Growing more dim.

But the engines cough and call;

One or two lights in the silence

Watch the night shutting slowly down dark doors on the city.

Behind her spangled mask

She frowns a little, standing more weary,

But still casting out on the darkness

Her glory, where winds will whirl it

Through dry splinters of grass on the dunes.