A walk in Manhattan
Faces that float in rivers of people I meet; I see and pass
Throngs thrust through bustling city, buzzing noise and broken roar
Faces that come and go; faces I see and lose in windows glass
All portraits new I will never see again; I have never seen before
Strangers of all ages and all human specimans encounter my pace
The comers and the goers, marches of face to face
Parades of face after face in string of dazzling colors ware
An endless human streams too busy world to stop and stare
An ant hill city of maddening crowd’s ignoble strife
With sober ambitions without boundaries into all four winds to stray
Along cool sequestered decorum of life
All morals bent with insentient apathy out of way
People in rows, crowds in queues, clans in knots
The famous the anonymous, the have and the have not
Diamonds and ashes in street ashrays
while corners vendors and nooks players reciting their pray
Have you ever imagined how much you can tell
In the instantaneous encounter of human eyes
In ants path where no words are exchanged like soundless tale
You have the brief glimpse of a moment to pierce one's fragile disguise
Hurry, capture, net the rushing secrets of joy, agony and indifferent fatigue
Feeling crying, characters shining from all garments, styles and hidden places
A strode of strives and struggles in all passing faces
Walking, rushing ecstasy of success and the scare of failure and critic
On brandished high heels fashion ladies treat
With the rhythm of sculptured legs on stone walk beat
Tall on burnished hooves astute lawyers; vain confidence that the world fate
Is in their crocodiles leather-ed suitcase encapsulate
In this worlds of stage a middle age woman passes upon whom I gaze
The measures she takes to hide her waning beauty leave me amaze
She is all wrapped in colorful deceit and counterfeit labors
That so immodesty displays nature’s gone favors
With its fallacious arguments of colors and elaborate cloth
Is to the senses cunning counterfeit and cynic loath
Rushing people in elongated avenues; restless streets flocks
I froze for a moment in trepidation and fear of thee
In the meeting of our eyes lock in streets shaded oaks
I can tell, you can tell, as much, so much of me
[...] Read more
poem by Isaac Ziv
Added by Poetry Lover
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