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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
STORM ON FIFTH AVENUE, by SIEGFRIED SASSOON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: A sallow waiter brings me six huge oysters Last Line: O babylon! O carthage! O new york! Subject(s): New York City; Manhattan; New York, New York; The Big Apple | |||
A SALLOW waiter brings me six huge oysters. ... Gloom shutters up the sunset with a plague Of unpropitious twilight jagged asunder By flashlight demonstrations. Gee, what a peach Of a climate! (Pardon slang: these sultry storms Afflict me with neurosis: rumbling thunder Shakes my belief in academic forms.) An oyster-coloured atmospheric rumpus Beats up to blot the sunken daylight's gildings. Against the looming cloud-bank, ivory-pale, Stand twenty-storied blocks of office buildings. Snatched upward on a gust, lost news-sheets sail Waif-like in lone arena of mid-air; Flapping like melancholy kites, they scare My gaze, a note of wildness in the scene. Out on the pattering side-walk people hurry For shelter, while the tempest swoops to scurry Across to Brooklyn. Bellying figures clutch At wide-brimmed hats and bend to meet the weather Alarmed for fresh-worn silks and flurried feather. Then hissing deluge splashes down to beat The darkly glistening flatness of the street. Only the cars nose on through rain-lashed twilight: Only the Sherman Statue, angel-guided, Maintains its mock-heroic martial gesture. A sallow waiter brings me beans and pork. Outside there's fury in the firmament. Ice-cream, of course, will follow; and I'm content. ... O Babylon! O Carthage! O New York! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...READY FOR THE CANNERY by BERTON BRALEY TRANTER IN AMERICA by AUGUST KLEINZAHLER MEETING YOU AT THE PIERS by KENNETH KOCH FEBRUARY EVENING IN NEW YORK by DENISE LEVERTOV ON 52ND STREET by PHILIP LEVINE THREE POEMS FOR NEW YORK by JOSEPHINE MILES NEW YORK SUBWAY by HILDA MORLEY |
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