Explore "Decadent Cry" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Hill-flowers salute his feet / Upon the upward slant of a path. / His destination does not matter. / His legs divide the spacious tragedy / Of distance into the small translation / Of steps, and with their aid he reaches / The fraudulent temple of a pause or end. / Hill-flowers, important and unprejudiced, / Bow to this monster-clown.
/ His feet, ridiculous and neat, / Do not stop, for they must ape / A certainty and hasten to attack / Or praise fixed idols made by flesh and mind. / Hill-flowers, trimly polished / Devices hailing preciosity; / Rumpled by the wind / To scores of original caprices; / Bearing the transfigured skirmish / Of spiritual moods that men call color; / Swiftly and unassumingly / Deaf to lusts and traditions -- / They are not regarded / By the men who walk, flat-footed, / Or with scholarly exactitude, / In chase of an ardent chicanery / Known as flesh, and elderly / Quibbles of mind and emotion.