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Home  »  Others for 1919  »  Dock Rats

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

Marianne Moore

Dock Rats

THERE are human beings who seem to regard the place

as craftily as we do—who seem to feel that it is a

good place to come home to. On what a river;

wide—twinkling like a chopped sea under some

of the finest shipping in the

world: the square-rigged four-master, the liner, the

battleship like the two-thirds submerged section of

an iceberg; the tug—strong-moving thing, dip-

ping and pushing, the bell striking as it comes; the

steam yacht, lying like a new made arrow on the

stream; the ferry-boat—a head assigned, one to

each compartment, making a row of chessmen set

for play. When the wind is from the east, the

smell is of apples; of hay, the aroma increased and

decreased suddenly as the wind changes;

of rope; of mountain leaves for florists. When it is

from the west, it is an elixir. There is oc-

casionally a parokeet

arrived from Brazil, clasping and clawing; or a

monkey—tail and feet in readiness for an over-

ture. All palms and tail; how delightful! There is

the sea, moving the bulkhead with its horse

strength; and the multiplicity of rudders and pro-

pellors; the signals, shrill, questioning, per-

emptory, diverse; the wharf cats and the barge dogs—it

is easy to overestimate the value of such things.

One does not live in such a place from motives of

expediency but because to one who has been ac-

customed to it, shipping is the most congenial thing in the world.