dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  William Carlos Williams

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Lonely Street

William Carlos Williams

SCHOOL is over. It is too hot

to walk at ease. At ease

in light frocks they walk the streets

to while the time away.

They have grown tall. They hold

pink flames in their right hands.

In white from head to foot,

with sidelong, idle look—

in yellow, floating stuff,

black sash and stockings—

touching their avid mouths

with pink sugar on a stick—

like a carnation each holds in her hand—

they mount the lonely street.