CITIES

Oh cities are a fever in my blood,
And all their moods find lodgement in my breast,
Whether they sweep me onward like a flood
Or torture me as an unwanted guest,
With wormwood flavoring my scanty foods,
I love all cities, I love their changing moods.

I love all cities, I love their foreign ways,
Their tyranny over the life of man,
Their wakeful nights and never-resting days,
Their mighty movements seeming without plan,
Their pavement stones on which the broken fall,
Their damning wickedness: I love it all.

TETUAN

Morecco conquering, homage paid to Spain
And the Albambra lifted up its towers!
Africa's fingers tipped with miracles,
And quivering with Arabian designs,
Traced words and figures like exotic flowers,
Sultanas' chambers of rare tapestries,
Filigree marvels from Koranic lines,
Mosaics chanting notes like tropic rain.

And Spain repaid the tribute ages after:
To Tetuan, that fort of struggle and strife,
Where chagrined Andalusian Moors retired,
She brought a fountain bubbling with new life,
Whose jewelled charm won even the Moslem pride,
And filled it sparkling with flamenco laughter.

XAUEN

Oh, lovely fountain bubbling in my breast,
And cleansing all the bitter memories,
Of pilgriming over the gutters of life:
Flow tenderly along the avenue
Of my bruised body, heavy upon my knees,
wash
And the incisions where the sharp-edged knife
Of circumstance has penetrated through:-
Bathe me always as when I was your guest.

Oh, lovely fountain flowing like the dawn,
That comes like spiders weaving silver charm
Upon the heavy dews of Africa's night,
Perspiring for the happy days so warm
And amorous from the pressure of the light,
Playing upon the gem the Moors call Xauen.

TANGER

1

Upon this bridgehead of the broken span
Of two opposing continents, the air
Is hostile with the restless spirit of Mars,
Men's souls are nourished on religious hate,
Their children on suspicion and in fear,
Fresh wounds are ever made in ancient scars,
Life sacrificed to gods insatiate
Of Christian, Israelite, Mohammedan.

Morocco's severed head is a sunless ball
and pitched from goal to goal and all around--

African game of Europe's little league
Until the charming Paradisical ground
Is desolate and helpless from intrigue
And aptly christened International!

2

Tanger, the iron pirate fettered now,
With iron heavy upon your bruised feet,
And iron manacles on your helpless hand,
Watching the galleons go down the seas-
With golden cargo passing safe and fleet,
And brazen sounding horns over the land-
Between the guarded pillars of Hercules:--
What thoughts are hid behind your noble brow?

2

The tourists stop to gaze at you in chains
And purchase from the souks a souvenir,
Thinking your soul breathes in a servile guide.¹
But in the bled the rugged mountaineer,
Invoking Allah in fierce fanatic pride,
Lives by the shattered glory that still remains.

3

Tanger! A Rock of Ages painted white.
And oh, I found within your native niche
A beauty pregnant of life's pristine womb,
Whose fingers, dripping with experience,
Caressed my spirit and held it growing rich,
While, on your bosom asleep, I heard the drum
Of Africa upswelling from the dense
Dim deeps to stir you far upon the height.

Oh, I have felt the breaking wave on wave
Of ages washing up against your base,
From warm Sahara, heart of dark Soudan,
The clash and clamor of time, the human race
Within the cradle Medittereanean,
Round yon high symbol of the Berber brave!

BERLIN

There was a haughty spirit and impressive
In that deliberate granite pile on pile,
Rising so arrogant and challenging,
Imposing by sheer strength and heavy line
A stony will in ruthless Nordic style.
And of that massive grandeur everything
Created seemed and destined by design
To foster iron virtues and aggressive.

I sensed a brutal might and intrepid,
A Frankenstein in which the dynamo
Of Europe throbbed with sinister intent.
Yet strangely from the common ebb and flow
Issued a surge of sickening sentiment—
Around that force, rococo, insipid.

MOSCOW

Moscow for many loving her was dead...
But I beheld an oriental, fair,
Of jewelled buildings, pillars, domes and spires
Of hues prismatic dazzling to the sight.
A tinted glory in the Eastern air,
Of amorous sounding tones like passionate lyres,
And colors laughing richly their delight,
And reigning over all the color Red.

My memory bears engraved the strange Kremlin,
Of halls embodying the tiger will
Of Czarist instruments of mindless law.
And oftentimes my heart repeats the thrill,
When simply in that place I heard and saw
The human voice and presence of Lenin.

PARIS

1

The world has built a Paris to its image,
Of brazen lust and wild licentiousness,
Salome dancers nude of veils and fans,
Interpreting the thousand ways of love;
And having visioned that will nothing less
Than pagan paradise of courtesans
And cavaliers along the lovely grove,
Wonderful like all things seen through a mirage.

And Paris cynical and serpent-wise,
Uncoils her body to its sinuous length,
And charming those who never see below
The depths profound upon which rests her strength
Nor understand the fascinating glow,
The wisdom fathomed in her gleaming eyes.

2

Paris has never stormed my stubborn heart
And rushed like champagne sparkling to my head,
Whirling me round and round till I am spent
To fall down like a drunkard at her feet.
Because it is a city more like bread

PARIS

Than wine and meet as solid nourishment,
To build a man and make his mind complete
And fit him for his civilizing part.

More than all cities Paris is a school,
With lessons priced that every one can pay,
But education non-compulsory,
With teachers at your service day by day:
Like London and New York no need to hurry,
Yet he who does not learn was born a fool.

HARLEM

I

Transformed by colored lights a basement den,
With chairs and tables banked on either side,
And jammed within, young dark-skinned women and men,
Drinking and smoking, merry, vacant-eyed.

A Negro band, that scarcely seems awake,
Drones out half-heartedly a lazy tune,
While nimble, willing boys their orders take
And hurry to and from the near saloon.

And suddenly a happy, lilting note
Is struck, the walk and hop and trot begin,
Under the smoke upon foul air afloat;
Around the room the laughing figures spin
To sound of fiddle, drum and clarinet,
Dancing their world of shadows to forget.

II

It is best to sit and gaze; my heart then dances
To the lithe bodies gliding slowly by,
The amorous and inimitable glances
That subtly pass from roguish eye to eye,
The laughter gay like sounding silver ringing,
That fills the whole wide room from floor to ceiling,
A rush of rapture to my spirit bringing,
The deathless spirit of a race revealing.

HARLEM

Not one false step, no note that rings not true!
Unconscious even of the higher worth
fine
Of their ~~art~~, they lizard-like go through
The syncopated bars. Dead to the earth
And her harsh ways of menial toil and strife,
For them the dance is the great joy of life.

III

And yet these are the outcasts of the earth,
The race oppressed and scorned by mighty man.
How can they thus consent to joy and mirth
Who live beneath a world-eternal ban?
No faith is theirs, no shining ray of hope,
Except the martyr's faith, the hope that death
Some day will free them for their narrow scope
And once more merge them with the infinite breath.
But, oh they dance with poetry in their eyes
Whose dreamy loveliness no sorrow dims,
And parted lips and eager, gleeful cries,
And perfect rhythm in their nimble limbs.
The gifts divine are theirs, music and laughter,
All other things, however great, come after.