The days, the nights, flow one by one above us, <br />The hours go silently over our lifted faces, <br />We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea. <br />Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together. <br />We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee. <br /> <br />We sit at tables and sip our morning coffee, <br />We read the papers for tales of lust or crime. <br />The door swings shut behind the latest comer. <br />We set our watches, regard the time. <br /> <br />What have we done? I close my eyes, remember <br />The great machine whose sinister brain before me <br />Smote and smote with a rhythmic beat. <br />My hands have torn down walls, the stone and plaster. <br />I dropped great beams to the dusty street. <br /> <br />My eyes are worn with measuring cloths of purple, <br />And golden cloths, and wavering cloths, and pale. <br />I dream of a crowd of faces, white with menace. <br />Hands reach up to tear me. My brain will fail. <br /> <br />Here, where the walls go down beneath our picks, <br />These walls whose windows gap against the sky, <br />Atom by atom of flesh and brain and marble <br />Will build a glittering tower before we die . . . <br /> <br />The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street, <br />The young girl hums beneath her breath. <br />One goes out to beauty, and does not know it. <br />And one goes out to death.<br /><br />Conrad Potter Aiken<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-house-of-dust-part-02-09-interlude-2/
