Explore "Uneasy Reflections" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Determinedly peppered with signs, / The omnibus ambles without curiosity. / Southampton Row, Malborne Road, Charing Cross -- / These names have no relation / To the buildings they partition / If one mutters, "I shall go to Euston Road," / Imagination is relieved of all errands / And, decently ticketed, enters the omnibus. / If one muttered, "I shall go to protesting angles, / Surreptitiously middle-aged, / And find a reticent line to play with," / One would violate / The hasty convenience of labels / And seriously examine one's destination. / If poplar-trees, brief violets and green glades / On any country road had each received / An incongruous name -- Smith's Tree, / C. Jackson's Clump, or Ferguson's Depression -- / And city streets had never known a label, / Most poets would have turned their fluid obsession / On lamp-posts and the grandeur of ash-cans. / It would be grimly realistic now / To write about a violet or a cow.