Maxwell Bodenheim Poems : The Mountebank Criticizes

I lose all sense of profiles,
Strolling through your greys and blacks and browns!
No man bestows his orange robe
Soberly upon your uncoloured pavements,
Rebuking life for being death.
No woman taunts her sorrows
With a coloured haughtiness.
When you take to colours, you are ashamed,
Like pages nibbling at a pilfered tart.
You go back quickly to your coldness.
And since you have no colours on your clothes,
You walk in straight and measured lilts
As befits the seriously blind.
Your women do not stroll as though
Each step were a timid intrigue
Woven into the climax to which they fare.
Pistols, rhapsodies and heavy odours
Drugged the lustre of my time.
Yet, we had a virtue.
We lavished colours on our backs
And ravished our sorrow with brightness
That often gave a lightness to our feet!