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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Marjorie Allen Seiffert

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Interior

Marjorie Allen Seiffert

From “Gallery of Paintings”

WORDS curl like fragrant smoke-wreaths in the room

From the majestic beard of an old man

Who props his shabby feet upon the stove

Recalling ancient sorrows. In the gloom

Beyond the lamp a woman thinks of love,

Her round arms wrapped in her apron, her dark head

Drooping. She has a bitter thing to learn.

His words drift over her … uncomforted

Her pain whirls up and twists like a scarlet thread

Among his words. He rises, shoves his chair

Back from the stove, pauses beside her there;

Shuffles irresolutely off to bed.