IV Afternoon Rain in State Street
Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,Slant lines of black rainIn front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.Below,Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,The street.And over it, umbrellas,Black polished dotsStruck to whiteAn instant,Stream in two flat linesSlipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.Like a four-sided wedgeThe Custom House TowerPokes at the low, flat sky,Pushing it farther and farther up,Lifting it away from the house-tops,Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin,With the lever of its apex.The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely,Scratching lines of black wire across it,Mutilating its perpendicular grey surfaceWith the sharp precision of tools.The city is rigid with straight lines and angles,A chequered table of blacks and greys.Oblong blocks of flatnessCrawl by with low-geared engines,And pass to short upright squaresShrinking with distance.A steamer in the basin blows its whistle,And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings,A narrow, level bar of steel.Hard cubes of lemonSuperimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildingsAs the windows light up.But the lemon cubes are edged with anglesUpon which they cannot impinge.Up, straight, down, straight—square.Crumpled grey-white papersBlow along the side-walks,Contorted, horrible,Without curves.A horse steps in a puddle,And white, glaring water spurts upIn stiff, outflaring lines,Like the rattling stems of reeds.The city is heraldic with angles,A sombre escutcheon of argent and sableAnd countercoloured bends of rainHung over a four-square civilization.When a street lamp comes out,I gaze at it for fully thirty secondsTo rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe.