Garbage-Heap by Maxwell Bodenheim — Read

/ The wind was shrill and mercenary, / Like a housewife pacing down the sky. / Green weeds and tin-cans in the yard / Made a debris of ludicrous dissipations. / The ochre of cold elations / Had settled on the cans. / Their brilliant labels peeped from the weeds, / Like the remains of a charlatan. / A bone reclined against a fence-post / And mouldily congratulated life. / A woman's garter wasted its faded frills / Upon a newspaper argument. / The shipwrecked rancor of bottles and boxes / Was pressed to disfigured complexities. / A smell of torrential asperity / Knew the spirit of the yard.

/ Contented or incensed, / The wreckage stood in the yard, / One shade below the sardonic.