Nearsight

When Spruggles takes his glasses off, he sees. Globular people strut like walking trees Through a strange, oozy mist that melts to air Some thirty feet before his blinking stare And all the edgy corners of the streets Are puffed and bulged like bottle-’scaped Afreets! —There are no definitions. All is dim. A yellowy underworld, where trolleys swim Enormous as a magic, and the least Rice-powdered shop-girl, like a vesting priest Assumes estranged beauty, cloudy-far, Desirous as a water-mirrored star. —The houses are cartoons—So is his wife— He thinks “Grotesque” would be the word for Life.