When night slinks, like a puma, down the sky,
And the bare, windy streets echo with silence,
Street lamps come out, and lean at corners, awry,
Casting black shadows, oblique and intense;
So they burn on, impersonal, through the night,
Hearing the hours slowly topple past
Like cold drops from a glistening stalactite,
Until grey planes splinter the gloom at last;
Then they go out.
I think I noticed once
- T'was morning - one sole street lamp still bright-lit,
Which, with a senile grin, like an old dunce,
Vied the blue sky, and tried to rival it;
And, leering pallid though its use was done,
Tried to cast shadows contrary to the sun.