The Unquiet Street

By day and night this street is not still: Omnibuses with red tail-lamps, Taxicabs with shiny eyes, Rumble, shunning its ugliness. It is corrugated with wheel-ruts, It is dented and pockmarked with traffic, It has no time for sleep. It heaves its old scarred countenance Skyward between the buildings And never says a word.

On rainy nights It dully gleams Like the cold tarnished scales of a snake: And over it hang arc-lamps, Blue-white death-lilies on black stems.