Conrad Aiken

From “Many Evenings”

AS evening falls,

And the yellow lights leap one by one

Along high walls

And along black streets that glisten as if with rain,

The muted city seems

Like one in a restless sleep who lies and dreams

Of vague desires, vague memories, and half-forgotten pain…..

Along dark veins like lights the quick dreams run,

Flash, are extinguished, flash again,

To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain

And die away…..

As evening falls,

A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,

A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare.

The lover rises, the harlot combs her hair,

The dead man’s face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight,

The watchman climbs the stair…..

The bank-defaulter leers at a chaos of figures

And runs among them and is beaten down;

The sick man coughs, and hears the chisels ringing;

The tired clown

Sees the enormous crowd—a million faces

Motionless in their places,

Ready to laugh, and seize, and crush, and tear….

The dancer smooths her hair,

Laces her golden slippers and runs through the door

To dance once more,

Hearing swift music like an enchantment rise,

Feeling the praise of a thousand eyes.

As darkness falls,

The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls

Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,

Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.

How shall we live tonight, where shall we turn?

To what new light or darkness yearn?

A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;

And one by one in myriads we descend

By lamp-lit flowered walls, long balustrades,

Through half-lit halls which reach no end.