THE COMMON LIFE

That's the down-town frieze,

Principally the church steeple,

A black line beside a white line;

And the stack of the electric plants

A black line drawn on flat air.

It is a morbid light

In which they stand.

Like an electric lamp

On a page of Euclid.

In this light a man is a result,

A demonstration, and a woman,

Without rose and without violet,

The shadows that are absent from Euclid,

Is not a woman for a man.

The paper is whiter

For these black lines.

It glares beneath the webs

Of wire, the designs of ink.

The planes that ought to have genius.

The volumes like marble ruins

Outlined and having alphabetical

Notations and footnotes.

The paper is whiter.

The men have no shadows

And the women have only one side.