Harold Bond: Interlude

Unheard now are the bison-footed throngs,
The mother-searching, screeching children, cards
And cops and tramps... unheard the raspy songs
Of peanut-vendors, organ-grinders, bars

From ukelel-playing blind men... all
Are silent now (the buildings too must sleep)
In genuflection to the naked wall
Of night. Unfettered from the giddy sweep

Of day, the streets portray a humbler scene,
The bellowings and blare of then replaced
By window-shopping pidgeons out to glean
The gutters, walks and alleys of their waste.

While traffic lights, like robots, flick their beams,
Consorting, blinking with a lonely moon,
Remains of evening papers lie in reams,
Read only by the dancing wind. But soon

The bison-footed throngs will walk again:
The sun will rise, the day will take its cue,
The dormant city will awake and then
The freenzied drama will begin anew.


Harold H. Bond [Bondjoukjian] 1939-2000

This poem has appeared in the Winter 1961 issue of ARARAT magazine.