Читать книгу The Quarry - Dan Lechay - Страница 11

River

long ago

South, south

of the edge of town,

the Negroes lived

in tiny houses

along the river;

high on a bluff

upstream, our city

lay half awake

on hard gray stone.

There came, at times,

the vast ideas

of passing clouds,

but the river below us,

flat and glittering,

never appeared

to move. —We were

so far, we thought,

from anywhere!

We’d haunt the depot,

where shadows twitched

in sleep to occasional

shrieks of trains;

or else stare up

as Pipers, frail

as insects caught

in beads of amber,

struggled aloft

to hover, sunlit,

then disappeared

in thickening air.

We followed the river

to City Park,

where it came to a sudden,

majestic boil—

collapsing over

the Third Street dam.

Fascinating,

the patterns in

those webs of foam;

endless the stumps

of trees, the hat,

and shattered door

that whirled in the water,

rose in a rush,

and were sucked back in.

The undertow

enchanted them.

But we forged onward,

south, south,

to the edge of town,

to the gravel pits

and mudflats where

flamboyant and sad

under yellow maples

we saw the houses

of pink and gold.

They looked like stamps

someone had stuck

in an album, once;

they looked like flags

from somewhere far—

and hot, and poor—

left out in the rain

till the colors ran.