The Poetry Corner

Promenade

By Lola Ridge

Undulant rustlings, Of oncoming silk, Rhythmic, incessant, Like the motion of leaves... Fragments of color In glowing surprises... Pink inuendoes Hooded in gray Like buds in a cobweb Pearled at dawn... Glimpses of green And blurs of gold And delicate mauves That snatch at youth... And bodies all rosily Fleshed for the airing, In warm velvety surges Passing imperious, slow... Women drift into the limousines That shut like silken caskets On gems half weary of their glittering... Lamps open like pale moon flowers... Arcs are radiant opals Strewn along the dusk... No common lights invade. And spires rise like litanies - Magnificats of stone Over the white silence of the arcs, Burning in perpetual adoration.