Best Famous Sidewalk Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Sidewalk poems. This is a select list of the best famous Sidewalk poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Sidewalk poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of sidewalk poems.

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• All Famous Sidewalk Poems

Written by Anne Sexton | The Break Away Your daisies have come on the day of my divorce: the courtroom a cement box, a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land for the Jew in me, but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us— and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors that makes the now separate parts useless, even to cut each other up as we did yearly under the crayoned-in sun. The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break into two cans ready for recycling, flattened tin humans and a tin law, even for my twenty-five years of hanging on by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers. The gray room: Judge, lawyer, witness and me and invisible Skeezix, and all the other torn enduring the bewilderments of their division. Your daisies have come on the day of my divorce. They arrive like round yellow fish, sucking with love at the coral of our love. Yet they wait, in their short time, like little utero half-borns, half killed, thin and bone soft. They breathe the air that stands for twenty-five illicit days, the sun crawling inside the sheets, the moon spinning like a tornado in the washbowl, and we orchestrated them both, calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS. There was a song, our song on your cassette, that played over and over and baptised the prodigals. It spoke the unspeakable, as the rain will on an attic roof, letting the animal join its soul as we kneeled before a miracle-- forgetting its knife. The daisies confer in the old-married kitchen papered with blue and green chefs who call out pies, cookies, yummy, at the charcoal and cigarette smoke they wear like a yellowy salve. The daisies absorb it all-- the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love (If one could call such handfuls of fists and immobile arms that!) and on this day my world rips itself up while the country unfastens along with its perjuring king and his court. It unfastens into an abortion of belief, as in me-- the legal rift-- as on might do with the daisies but does not for they stand for a love undergoihng open heart surgery that might take if one prayed tough enough. And yet I demand, even in prayer, that I am not a thief, a mugger of need, and that your heart survive on its own, belonging only to itself, whole, entirely whole, and workable in its dark cavern under your ribs. I pray it will know truth, if truth catches in its cup and yet I pray, as a child would, that the surgery take. I dream it is taking. Next I dream the love is swallowing itself. Next I dream the love is made of glass, glass coming through the telephone that is breaking slowly, day by day, into my ear. Next I dream that I put on the love like a lifejacket and we float, jacket and I, we bounce on that priest-blue. We are as light as a cat's ear and it is safe, safe far too long! And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window and peer down at the moon in the pond and know that beauty has walked over my head, into this bedroom and out, flowing out through the window screen, dropping deep into the water to hide. I will observe the daisies fade and dry up wuntil they become flour, snowing themselves onto the table beside the drone of the refrigerator, beside the radio playing Frankie (as often as FM will allow) snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling-- as twenty-five years split from my side like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma. It is six P. M. as I water these tiny weeds and their little half-life, their numbered days that raged like a secret radio, recalling love that I picked up innocently, yet guiltily, as my five-year-old daughter picked gum off the sidewalk and it became suddenly an elastic miracle. For me it was love found like a diamond where carrots grow-- the glint of diamond on a plane wing, meaning: DANGER! THICK ICE! but the good crunch of that orange, the diamond, the carrot, both with four million years of resurrecting dirt, and the love, although Adam did not know the word, the love of Adam obeying his sudden gift. You, who sought me for nine years, in stories made up in front of your naked mirror or walking through rooms of fog women, you trying to forget the mother who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss through the keyhole, you who wrote out your own birth and built it with your own poems, your own lumber, your own keyhole, into the trunk and leaves of your manhood, you, who fell into my words, years before you fell into me (the other, both the Camp Director and the camper), you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams, and calls and letters and once a luncheon, and twice a reading by me for you. But I wouldn't! Yet this year, yanking off all past years, I took the bait and was pulled upward, upward, into the sky and was held by the sun-- the quick wonder of its yellow lap-- and became a woman who learned her own shin and dug into her soul and found it full, and you became a man who learned his won skin and dug into his manhood, his humanhood and found you were as real as a baker or a seer and we became a home, up into the elbows of each other's soul, without knowing-- an invisible purchase-- that inhabits our house forever. We were blessed by the House-Die by the altar of the color T. V. and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage, a tiny marriage called belief, as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy, so close to absolute, so daft within a year or two. The daisies have come for the last time. And I who have, each year of my life, spoken to the tooth fairy, believing in her, even when I was her, am helpless to stop your daisies from dying, although your voice cries into the telephone: Marry me! Marry me! and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight: The love is in dark trouble! The love is starting to die, right now-- we are in the process of it. The empty process of it. I see two deaths, and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart, and though I willed one away in court today and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other, they both die like waves breaking over me and I am drowning a little, but always swimming among the pillows and stones of the breakwater. And though your daisies are an unwanted death, I wade through the smell of their cancer and recognize the prognosis, its cartful of loss-- I say now, you gave what you could. It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on! and the dead city of my marriage seems less important than the fact that the daisies came weekly, over and over, likes kisses that can't stop themselves. There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973. Let one be forgotten-- Bury it! Wall it up! But let me not forget the man of my child-like flowers though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior, he remains, his fingers the marvel of fourth of July sparklers, his furious ice cream cones of licking, remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth when I sweat into the bathtub of his being. For the rest that is left: name it gentle, as gentle as radishes inhabiting their short life in the earth, name it gentle, gentle as old friends waving so long at the window, or in the drive, name it gentle as maple wings singing themselves upon the pond outside, as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond, that night that it was ours, when our bodies floated and bumped in moon water and the cicadas called out like tongues. Let such as this be resurrected in all men whenever they mold their days and nights as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine and planted the seed that dives into my God and will do so forever no matter how often I sweep the floor.

Written by Charles Bukowski | Let It Enfold You either peace or happiness, let it enfold you when i was a young man I felt these things were dumb,unsophisticated. I had bad blood,a twisted mind, a pecarious upbringing. I was hard as granite,I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman. I was living a hell in small rooms, I broke things, smashed things, walked through glass, cursed. I challenged everything, was continually being evicted,jailed,in and out of fights,in and aout of my mind. women were something to screw and rail at,i had no male freinds, I changed jobs and cities,I hated holidays, babies,history, newspapers, museums, grandmothers, marriage, movies, spiders, garbagemen, english accents,spain, france,italy,walnuts and the color orange. algebra angred me, opera sickened me, charlie chaplin was a fake and flowers were for pansies. peace an happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak an addled mind. but as I went on with my alley fights, my suicidal years, my passage through any number of women-it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn't diffrent from the others, I was the same, they were all fulsome with hatred, glossed over with petty greivances, the men I fought in alleys had hearts of stone. everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was emptey, darkness was the dictator. cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. the less i needed the better i felt. maybe the other life had worn me down. I no longer found glamour in topping somebody in conversation. or in mounting the body of some poor drunken female whose life had slipped away into sorrow. I could never accept life as it was, i could never gobble down all its poisons but there were parts, tenous magic parts open for the asking. I re formulated I don't know when, date,time,all that but the change occured. something in me relaxed, smoothed out. i no longer had to prove that i was a man, I did'nt have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffe cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. or a dog walking along a sidewalk. or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful. then- it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those. like say, the boss behind his desk, he is going to have to fire me. I've missed too many days. he is dressed in a suit, necktie, glasses, he says, "i am going to have to let you go" "it's all right" i tell him. He must do what he must do, he has a wife, a house, children. expenses, most probably a girlfreind. I am sorry for him he is caught. I walk onto the blazing sunshine. the whole day is mine temporailiy, anyhow. (the whole world is at the throat of the world, everybody feels angry, short-changed, cheated, everybody is despondent, dissillusioned) I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness. I embraced that stuff like the hottest number, like high heels,breasts, singing,the works. (dont get me wrong, there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism that overlooks all basic problems justr for the sake of itself- this is a sheild and a sickness. ) The knife got near my throat again, I almost turned on the gas again but when the good moments arrived again I did'nt fight them off like an alley adversary. I let them take me, i luxuriated in them, I bade them welcome home. I even looked into the mirror once having thought myself to be ugly, I now liked what I saw,almost handsome,yes, a bit ripped and ragged, scares,lumps, odd turns, but all in all, not too bad, almost handsome, better at least than some of those movie star faces like the cheeks of a babys butt. and finally I discovered real feelings fo others, unhearleded, like latley, like this morning, as I was leaving, for the track, i saw my wif in bed, just the shape of her head there (not forgetting centuries of the living and the dead and the dying, the pyarimids, Mozart dead but his music still there in the room, weeds growing, the earth turning, the toteboard waiting for me) I saw the shape of my wife's head, she so still, i ached for her life, just being there under the covers. i kissed her in the, forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and emptey of people, i saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.

Written by Anne Sexton | Courage It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone. When they called you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made you into an alien, you drank their acid and concealed it. Later, if you faced the death of bombs and bullets you did not do it with a banner, you did it with only a hat to comver your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing, then his courage was not courage, it was love; love as simple as shaving soap. Later, if you have endured a great despair, then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire, picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock. Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow, you gave it a back rub and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed. Later, when you face old age and its natural conclusion your courage will still be shown in the little ways, each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen, those you love will live in a fever of love, and you'll bargain with the calendar and at the last moment when death opens the back door you'll put on your carpet slippers and stride out.

Written by Shel Silverstein | Where the Sidewalk Ends There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends. Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends.

Written by Anne Sexton | The Double Image 1. I am thirty this November. You are still small, in your fourth year. We stand watching the yellow leaves go *****, flapping in the winter rain. falling flat and washed. And I remember mostly the three autumns you did not live here. They said I'd never get you back again. I tell you what you'll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go. I, who chose two times to kill myself, had said your nickname the mewling mouths when you first came; until a fever rattled in your throat and I moved like a pantomine above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame, I heard them say, was mine. They tattled like green witches in my head, letting doom leak like a broken faucet; as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet, an old debt I must assume. Death was simpler than I'd thought. The day life made you well and whole I let the witches take away my guilty soul. I pretended I was dead until the white men pumped the poison out, putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole of talking boxes and the electric bed. I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel. Today the yellow leaves go *****. You ask me where they go I say today believed in itself, or else it fell. Today, my small child, Joyce, love your self's self where it lives. There is no special God to refer to; or if there is, why did I let you grow in another place. You did not know my voice when I came back to call. All the superlatives of tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe will not help you know the holidays you had to miss. The time I did not love myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove. There was new snow after this. 2. They sent me letters with news of you and I made moccasins that I would never use. When I grew well enough to tolerate myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said. But I didn't leave. I had my portrait done instead. Part way back from Bedlam I came to my mother's house in Gloucester, Massachusetts. And this is how I came to catch at her; and this is how I lost her. I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said. And she never could. She had my portrait done instead. I lived like an angry guest, like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child. I remember my mother did her best. She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled. Your smile is like your mother's, the artist said. I didn't seem to care. I had my portrait done instead. There was a church where I grew up with its white cupboards where they locked us up, row by row, like puritans or shipmates singing together. My father passed the plate. Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said. I wasn't exactly forgiven. They had my portrait done instead. 3. All that summer sprinklers arched over the seaside grass. We talked of drought while the salt-parched field grew sweet again. To help time pass I tried to mow the lawn and in the morning I had my portrait done, holding my smile in place, till it grew formal. Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit and a postcard of Motif number one, as if it were normal to be a mother and be gone. They hung my portrait in the chill north light, matching me to keep me well. Only my mother grew ill. She turned from me, as if death were catching, as if death transferred, as if my dying had eaten inside of her. That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt. On the first of September she looked at me and said I gave her cancer. They carved her sweet hills out and still I couldn't answer. 4. That winter she came part way back from her sterile suite of doctors, the seasick cruise of the X-ray, the cells' arithmetic gone wild. Surgery incomplete, the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard them say. During the sea blizzards she had here own portrait painted. A cave of mirror placed on the south wall; matching smile, matching contour. And you resembled me; unacquainted with my face, you wore it. But you were mine after all. I wintered in Boston, childless bride, nothing sweet to spare with witches at my side. I missed your babyhood, tried a second suicide, tried the sealed hotel a second year. On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this was good. 5. I checked out for the last time on the first of May; graduate of the mental cases, with my analysts's okay, my complete book of rhymes, my typewriter and my suitcases. All that summer I learned life back into my own seven rooms, visited the swan boats, the market, answered the phone, served cocktails as a wife should, made love among my petticoats and August tan. And you came each weekend. But I lie. You seldom came. I just pretended you, small piglet, butterfly girl with jelly bean cheeks, disobedient three, my splendid stranger. And I had to learn why I would rather die than love, how your innocence would hurt and how I gather guilt like a young intern his symptons, his certain evidence. That October day we went to Gloucester the red hills reminded me of the dry red fur fox coat I played in as a child; stock still like a bear or a tent, like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox. We drove past the hatchery, the hut that sells bait, past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall's Hill, to the house that waits still, on the top of the sea, and two portraits hung on the opposite walls. 6. In north light, my smile is held in place, the shadow marks my bone. What could I have been dreaming as I sat there, all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone of the smile, the young face, the foxes' snare. In south light, her smile is held in place, her cheeks wilting like a dry orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown love, my first image. She eyes me from that face that stony head of death I had outgrown. The artist caught us at the turning; we smiled in our canvas home before we chose our foreknown separate ways. The dry redfur fox coat was made for burning. I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray. And this was the cave of the mirror, that double woman who stares at herself, as if she were petrified in time -- two ladies sitting in umber chairs. You kissed your grandmother and she cried. 7. I could not get you back except for weekends. You came each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack your things. We touch from habit. The first visit you asked my name. Now you will stay for good. I will forget how we bumped away from each other like marionettes on strings. It wasn't the same as love, letting weekends contain us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name, wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying. You can call me mother and I remember my mother again, somewhere in greater Boston, dying. I remember we named you Joyce so we could call you Joy. You came like an awkward guest that first time, all wrapped and moist and strange at my heavy breast. I needed you. I didn't want a boy, only a girl, a small milky mouse of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house of herself. We named you Joy. I, who was never quite sure about being a girl, needed another life, another image to remind me. And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure or soothe it. I made you to find me.

Written by Stephen Dunn | Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry Relax. This won't last long. Or if it does, or if the lines make you sleepy or bored, give in to sleep, turn on the T. V. , deal the cards. This poem is built to withstand such things. Its feelings cannot be hurt. They exist somewhere in the poet, and I am far away. Pick it up anytime. Start it in the middle if you wish. It is as approachable as melodrama, and can offer you violence if it is violence you like. Look, there's a man on a sidewalk; the way his leg is quivering he'll never be the same again. This is your poem and I know you're busy at the office or the kids are into your last nerve. Maybe it's sex you've always wanted. Well, they lie together like the party's unbuttoned coats, slumped on the bed waiting for drunken arms to move them. I don't think you want me to go on; everyone has his expectations, but this is a poem for the entire family. Right now, Budweiser is dripping from a waterfall, deodorants are hissing into armpits of people you resemble, and the two lovers are dressing now, saying farewell. I don't know what music this poem can come up with, but clearly it's needed. For it's apparent they will never see each other again and we need music for this because there was never music when he or she left you standing on the corner. You see, I want this poem to be nicer than life. I want you to look at it when anxiety zigzags your stomach and the last tranquilizer is gone and you need someone to tell you I'll be here when you want me like the sound inside a shell. The poem is saying that to you now. But don't give anything for this poem. It doesn't expect much. It will never say more than listening can explain. Just keep it in your attache case or in your house. And if you're not asleep by now, or bored beyond sense, the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry. Come on: Good. Now here's what poetry can do. Imagine yourself a caterpillar. There's an awful shrug and, suddenly, You're beautiful for as long as you live.

Written by Raymond Carver | Circulation And all at length are gathered in. --LOUISE BOGAN By the time I came around to feeling pain and woke up, moonlight flooded the room. My arm lay paralyzed, propped up like an old anchor under your back. You were in a dream, you said later, where you'd arrived early for the dance. But after a moment's anxiety you were okay because it was really a sidewalk sale, and the shoes you were wearing, or not wearing, were fine for that. * "Help me," I said. And tried to hoist my arm. But it just lay there, aching, unable to rise on its own. Even after you said, "What is it? What's wrong?" it stayed put -- deaf, unmoved by any expression of fear or amazement. We shouted at it, and grew afraid when it didn't answer. "It's gone to sleep," I said, and hearing those words knew how absurd this was. But I couldn't laugh. Somehow, between the two of us, we managed to raise it. This can't be my arm is what I kept thinking as we thumped it, squeezed it, and prodded it back to life. Shook it until that stinging went away. We said a few words to each other. I don't remember what. Whatever reassuring things people who love each other say to each other given the hour and such odd circumstance. I do remember you remarked how it was light enough in the room that you could see circles under my eyes. You said I needed more regular sleep, and I agreed. Each of us went to the bathroom, and climbed back into bed on our respective sides. Pulled the covers up. "Good night," you said, for the second time that night. And fell asleep. Maybe into that same dream, or else another. * I lay until daybreak, holding both arms fast across my chest. Working my fingers now and then. While my thoughts kept circling around and around, but always going back where they'd started from. That one inescapable fact: even while we undertake this trip, there's another, far more bizarre, we still have to make.

Written by Kenneth Koch | One Train May Hide Another (sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya) In a poem, one line may hide another line, As at a crossing, one train may hide another train. That is, if you are waiting to cross The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read Wait until you have read the next line— Then it is safe to go on reading. In a family one sister may conceal another, So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another. One father or one brother may hide the man, If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love. So always standing in front of something the other As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas. One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe; One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another, One small complaint may hide a great one. One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another, One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath may hide another bath As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain. One idea may hide another: Life is simple Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory One invention may hide another invention, One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows. One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass, These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here. A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it. In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother's And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or the same love As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts" Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that" And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve. Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem. When you come to something, stop to let it pass So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where, Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about, The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A Sentimental Journey look around When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see If it is standing there, it should be, stronger And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree With one and when you get up to leave there is another Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher, One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass. You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

Written by Shel Silverstein | Picture Puzzle Piece One picture puzzle piece Lyin' on the sidewalk, One picture puzzle piece Soakin' in the rain. It might be a button of blue On the coat of the woman Who lived in a shoe. It might be a magical bean, Or a fold in the red Velvet robe of a queen. It might be the one little bite Of the apple her stepmother Gave to Snow White. It might be the veil of a bride Or a bottle with some evil genie inside. It might be a small tuft of hair On the big bouncy belly Of Bobo the Bear. It might be a bit of the cloak Of the Witch of the West As she melted to smoke. It might be a shadowy trace Of a tear that runs down an angel's face. Nothing has more possibilities Than one old wet picture puzzle piece.

Written by Richard Wilbur | Shame It is a cramped little state with no foreign policy, Save to be thought inoffensive. The grammar of the language Has never been fathomed, owing to the national habit Of allowing each sentence to trail off in confusion. Those who have visited Scusi, the capital city, Report that the railway-route from Schuldig passes Through country best described as unrelieved. Sheep are the national product. The faint inscription Over the city gates may perhaps be rendered, "I'm afraid you won't find much of interest here. " Census-reports which give the population As zero are, of course, not to be trusted, Save as reflecting the natives' flustered insistence That they do not count, as well as their modest horror Of letting one's sex be known in so many words. The uniform grey of the nondescript buildings, the absence Of churches or comfort-stations, have given observers An odd impression of ostentatious meanness, And it must be said of the citizens (muttering by In their ratty sheepskins, shying at cracks in the sidewalk) That they lack the peace of mind of the truly humble. The tenor of life is careful, even in the stiff Unsmiling carelessness of the border-guards And douaniers, who admit, whenever they can, Not merely the usual carloads of deodorant But gypsies, g-strings, hasheesh, and contraband pigments. Their complete negligence is reserved, however, For the hoped-for invasion, at which time the happy people (Sniggering, ruddily naked, and shamelessly drunk) Will stun the foe by their overwhelming submission, Corrupt the generals, infiltrate the staff, Usurp the throne, proclaim themselves to be sun-gods, And bring about the collapse of the whole empire.