[The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,]

The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,
And the lonely sun clashes like brass cymbals.

In the streets truck-horses, muscles sliding under the steaming hides,
Pound the sparks flying about their hooves;
And fires, those gorgeous beasts, squirm in the furnaces,
Under the looms weaving us.

At evening by cellars cold with air of rivers at night,
We, whose lives are only a few words,
Watch the young moon leaning over the baby at her breast
And the stars small to our littleness.

The slender trees stand alone in the fields
Between the roofs of the far town
And the wood far away like a low hill.

In the vast open
The birds are faintly overheard.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 8, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“[The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,]” appeared in Poems (Samuel Roth at the New York Poetry Book Shop, 1920).