Emmy Veronica Sanders

I STAND and stare.

Peace is somewhere—

Peace of the big blue spaces …

Like fists, the brutal lights on white and weary faces

Fall fiercely through the livid air.

A dull roar rises from the seething places

Where, cold-eyed slaves driven by cold-eyed masters,

Six million hunted beings dwell.

Six million shapes from a machine-made hell

Push past through filth and icy sleet,

Push down and up and ever up and down

The Street.

God—rid me of these wan unholy faces!

I stand and stare.

Peace is somewhere—

Peace of the big blue spaces …

Somewhere, far in the fells I know,

The aged pines, with heads bent low

And folded hands like solemn congregations,

Receive the silent sacrament of snow …

Somewhere the stillness is so deep that you can hear

Planets and stars gliding through crystal spaces,

Clear burning in the frozen halls of time….

I stand and stare—

At this mad pushing of a million feet,

At this wild thronging of the withered faces,

At this foul nightmare of

The Street.

Somewhere is Peace—

Peace of the wide blue spaces….