Towns in Colour poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry

I

Red Slippers

Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the street, flaws of grey,

windy sleet!

Behind the polished glass, the slippers hang in long threads of red,

festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes

of passers-by with dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections

against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon

into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon lights

upon the tops of umbrellas.

The row of white, sparkling shop fronts is gashed and bleeding,

it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light,

fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain – and freeze again to red slippers,

myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window.

They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson lacquer;

they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked

in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds,

flared and burnished by red rockets.

Snap, snap, they are cracker-sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous

block of shops.

They plunge the clangour of billions of vermilion trumpets

into the crowd outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement.

People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window, farther down,

is a big lotus bud of cardboard whose petals open every few minutes

and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair,

lolling awkwardly in its flower chair.

One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before?

The flaws of grey, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are only

red slippers.

II

Thompson’s Lunch Room – Grand Central Station

Study in Whites

Wax-white –

Floor, ceiling, walls.

Ivory shadows

Over the pavement

Polished to cream surfaces

By constant sweeping.

The big room is coloured like the petals

Of a great magnolia,

And has a patina

Of flower bloom

Which makes it shine dimly

Under the electric lamps.

Chairs are ranged in rows

Like sepia seeds

Waiting fulfilment.

The chalk-white spot of a cook’s cap

Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall –

Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow

Through the wavering uncertainty of steam.

Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections,

Ice-green carboys, shifting – greener, bluer – with the jar of moving water.

Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass

Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar

Above the lighthouse-shaped castors

Of grey pepper and grey-white salt.

Grey-white placards: “Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters”:

Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines.

Dropping on the white counter like horn notes

Through a web of violins,

The flat yellow lights of oranges,

The cube-red splashes of apples,

In high plated `epergnes’.

The electric clock jerks every half-minute:

“Coming! – Past!”

“Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,”

Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily.

A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair.

Two rice puddings and a salmon salad

Are pushed over the counter;

The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them.

A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal striking stone,

And the sound throws across the room

Sharp, invisible zigzags

Of silver.

III

An Opera House

Within the gold square of the proscenium arch,

A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds,

Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the stage behind.

Gold carving edges the balconies,

Rims the boxes,

Runs up and down fluted pillars.

Little knife-stabs of gold

Shine out whenever a box door is opened.

Gold clusters

Flash in soft explosions

On the blue darkness,

Suck back to a point,

And disappear.

Hoops of gold

Circle necks, wrists, fingers,

Pierce ears,

Poise on heads

And fly up above them in coloured sparkles.

Gold!

Gold!

The opera house is a treasure-box of gold.

Gold in a broad smear across the orchestra pit:

Gold of horns, trumpets, tubas;

Gold – spun-gold, twittering-gold, snapping-gold

Of harps.

The conductor raises his baton,

The brass blares out

Crass, crude,

Parvenu, fat, powerful,

Golden.

Rich as the fat, clapping hands in the boxes.

Cymbals, gigantic, coin-shaped,

Crash.

The orange curtain parts

And the prima-donna steps forward.

One note,

A drop: transparent, iridescent,

A gold bubble,

It floats . . . floats . . .

And bursts against the lips of a bank president

In the grand tier.

IV

Afternoon Rain in State Street

Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,

Slant lines of black rain

In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.

Below,

Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,

The street.

And over it, umbrellas,

Black polished dots

Struck to white

An instant,

Stream in two flat lines

Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.

Like a four-sided wedge

The Custom House Tower

Pokes at the low, flat sky,

Pushing it farther and farther up,

Lifting it away from the house-tops,

Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin,

With the lever of its apex.

The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely,

Scratching lines of black wire across it,

Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface

With the sharp precision of tools.

The city is rigid with straight lines and angles,

A chequered table of blacks and greys.

Oblong blocks of flatness

Crawl by with low-geared engines,

And pass to short upright squares

Shrinking with distance.

A steamer in the basin blows its whistle,

And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings,

A narrow, level bar of steel.

Hard cubes of lemon

Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings

As the windows light up.

But the lemon cubes are edged with angles

Upon which they cannot impinge.

Up, straight, down, straight – square.

Crumpled grey-white papers

Blow along the side-walks,

Contorted, horrible,

Without curves.

A horse steps in a puddle,

And white, glaring water spurts up

In stiff, outflaring lines,

Like the rattling stems of reeds.

The city is heraldic with angles,

A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable

And countercoloured bends of rain

Hung over a four-square civilization.

When a street lamp comes out,

I gaze at it for fully thirty seconds

To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe.

V

An Aquarium

Streaks of green and yellow iridescence,

Silver shiftings,

Rings veering out of rings,

Silver – gold –

Grey-green opaqueness sliding down,

With sharp white bubbles

Shooting and dancing,

Flinging quickly outward.

Nosing the bubbles,

Swallowing them,

Fish.

Blue shadows against silver-saffron water,

The light rippling over them

In steel-bright tremors.

Outspread translucent fins

Flute, fold, and relapse;

The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles

In scarcely tarnished twinklings.

Curving of spotted spines,

Slow up-shifts,

Lazy convolutions:

Then a sudden swift straightening

And darting below:

Oblique grey shadows

Athwart a pale casement.

Roped and curled,

Green man-eating eels

Slumber in undulate rhythms,

With crests laid horizontal on their backs.

Barred fish,

Striped fish,

Uneven disks of fish,

Slip, slide, whirl, turn,

And never touch.

Metallic blue fish,

With fins wide and yellow and swaying

Like Oriental fans,

Hold the sun in their bellies

And glow with light:

Blue brilliance cut by black bars.

An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer,

Across it, in a tangent,

A smear of rose, black, silver.

Short twists and upstartings,

Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles:

Sunshine playing between red and black flowers

On a blue and gold lawn.

Shadows and polished surfaces,

Facets of mauve and purple,

A constant modulation of values.

Shaft-shaped,

With green bead eyes;

Thick-nosed,

Heliotrope-coloured;

Swift spots of chrysolite and coral;

In the midst of green, pearl, amethyst irradiations.

Outside,

A willow-tree flickers

With little white jerks,

And long blue waves

Rise steadily beyond the outer islands.