AFTER THE OPERA

DOWN the stone stairs

Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy

Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion

up at me.

And I smile.

Ladies

Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet

Peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out

of the wreckage,

And among the wreck of the theatre crowd

I stand and smile.

They take tragedy so becomingly.

Which pleases me.

But when I meet the weary eyes

The reddened aching eyes of the bar-man with thin

arms,

I am glad to go back to where I came from.

Bay: A Book of Poems · 第 11 / 25 题