Humming and creaking, the car down the street
Lumbered and lurched through thunderous gloam,
Bearing us, spent and dumb with the heat,
From office and counter and factory home:
Sallow-faced clerks, genteel in black;
Girls from the laundries, draggled and dank;
Ruddy-faced laborers slouching slack;
A broken actor, grizzled and lank;
A mother with querulous babe on her lap;
A schoolboy whistling under his breath;
An old man crouched in a dreamless nap;
A widow with eyes on the eyes of death;
A priest; a sailor with deep-sea gaze;
A soldier in scarlet with waxed moustache;
A drunken trollop in velvet and lace;
All silent in that tense dusk….when a flash
Of lightning shivered the sultry gloom:
With shattering brattle the whole sky fell
About us, and rapt to a dazzling doom
We glided on in a timeless spell,
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