Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Holiday Crowd

Hortense Flexner

THEY do not know they wear their wounds so plain,

These covered bodies swathed in cloth and fur.

They do not dream they hold their naked pain

Before this show of life—the checkered stir

Here in the wintry sunlight on the street.

And yet, like martyrs on an old church wall,

They point their wounds—their bleeding hands and feet,

The aching scars, and lips that drank the gall.

For life has hurt them, though they will not cry

“Enough”; shaped flesh to hunger quick or dead,

Withered them, harried, twisted bones awry,

And bleached them white beneath their flying red.

Strange skeletons in merry dominoes,

They do not dream how plain the outline shows.