A. E. Stallings

The City (After Cavafy)

Pacing to and fro Along the autumn shore Among the wrack and reek With your arms clasped behind your back And sporting your grey frock-coat Trimmed in black And your black hat and your lean long-legged stride, Up and down the strand perusing The headlines of the tide: Casualties and statistics, futures, stocks, The thousand natural shocks, You clear your throat Inspecting the ink-black seaweed tossed among the rocks Like obsolete typewriter ribbons, rusty widow’s weeds, Scanning the flotsam for Morsels cast up by the remorseless gossip of the sea’s Éminence grise, How elegant you are, everyone concedes, Gentleman Crow, With your gimlet gaze, your sardonic beak, How omnivorous, how sleek. Life is a joke you crack, Wry and amusing, And death a dainty snack. %CODE_MORE_INTERVIEWS%