III
Immortal?... No,
they cannot be, these people,
nor I.
Tired faces,
eyes that have never seen the world,
bodies that have never lived in air,
lips that have never minted speech,
they are the clipped and garbled,
blocking the highway.
They swarm and eddy
between the banks of glowing shops
towards the red meat,
the potherbs,
the cheapjacks,
or surge in
before the swift rush
of the clanging trams,—
pitiful, ugly, mean,
encumbering.
Immortal?...
In a wood,
watching the shadow of a bird
leap from frond to frond of bracken,
I am immortal.
But these?
F. S. Flint