Analysis of Flotsam

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
  Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
  High-flung signs
  Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
  Girls in black
  Circling monotonously
  About the orange lights…
  Nothing to guess at…
  Save the darkness above
  Crouching like a great cat.
  In the dim-lit square,
  Where dishevelled trees
  Tustle with the wind—the wind like a scythe
  Mowing their last leaves—
  Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze—
  Pale oval arcs
  Like ailing virgins,
  Each out of a halo circumscribed,
  Pallidly staring…
  Figures drift upon the benches
  With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling—
  Slovenly figures like untied parcels,
  And papers wrapped about their knees
  Huddled one to the other,
  Cringing to the wind—
  The sided wind,
  Leaving no breach untried…
  So many and all so still…
  The fountain slobbering its stone basin
  Is louder than They—
  Flotsam of the five oceans
  Here on this raft of the world.
  This old man's head
  Has found a woman's shoulder.
  The wind juggles with her shawl
  That flaps about them like a sail,
  And splashes her red faded hair
  Over the salt stubble of his chin.
  A light foam is on his lips,
  As though dreams surged in him
  Breaking and ebbing away…
  And the bare boughs shuffle above him
  And the twigs rattle like dice…
  She—diffused like a broken beetle—
  Sprawls without grace,
  Her face gray as asphalt,
  Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges…
  Shadows ply about her mouth—
  Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree,
  That dances above her its dance of dry bones.
II

A uniformed front,
  Paunched;
  A glance like a blow,
  The swing of an arm,
  Verved, vigorous;
  Boot-heels clanking
  In metallic rhythm;
  The blows of a baton,
  Quick, staccato…
  —There is a rustling along the benches
  As of dried leaves raked over…
  And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand,
  Tucking the displaced paper about his knees.
  Colder…
  And a frost under foot,
  Acid, corroding,
  Eating through worn bootsoles.
  Drab forms blur into greenish vapor.
  Through boughs like cross-bones,
  Pale arcs flare and shiver
  Like lilies in a wind.
  High over Broadway
  A far-flung sign
  Glitters in indigo darkness
  And spurts again rhythmically,
  Spraying great drops
  Red as a hemorrhage.