Explore "To Orrick Johns" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ The tread-mill roar that ever tramps between / The smirched geometries of this stern place, / Sweeps vainly on your drowsily reckless face / Lost in a swirl of raped loves barely seen. / Sometimes your keenly pagan lips are raised / By thoughts too tense to shape themselves in speech: / Still, wounded thoughts that silently beseech / Your life to make them impotent and dazed.
/ O tangled and half-strangled child, you shrink / For ever from yourself, and wear a pose / Of nimble and impenetrable pride. / Yet sometimes, wavering on the sudden brink / Of jaded bitterness, you drop your clothes / And weave a prayer into your naked stride.