Or a sick child whines,
Or a door screaks on its hinges,
Or a man and woman fight--
Sends his cry above the huddled roofs:
Vorwärts... Vorwärts...

VI

In this dingy cafe
The old men sit muffled in woollens.
Everything is faded, shabby, colorless, old...
The chairs, loose-jointed,
Creaking like old bones--
The tables, the waiters, the walls,
Whose mottled plaster
Blends in one tone with the old flesh.

Young life and young thought are alike barred,
And no unheralded noises jolt old nerves,
And old wheezy breaths
Pass around old thoughts, dry as snuff,
And there is no divergence and no friction
Because life is flattened and ground as by many mills.

And it is here the Committee--
Sweet-breathed and smooth of skin
And supple of spine and knee,
With shining unpouched eyes
And the blood, high-powered,
Leaping in flexible arteries--