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Show A Red Kimono. I sit at my lonely casement, And rail at the dingy street The brawling venders passing With slow, uncertain feet; The whirling dust; the tumult Of children at their play; . The shabby, brown-stone "lodgings" That stare across the way. But a wing of gold and scarlet, Out-flashes in the sun There's a girl in a red kimono, At number twenty-one! My thought drift over the ocean To the Land of the Afternoon, And my heart is wildly dancing To the time of a rhymeless tune, A girl in a red kimono, With a zither on her knee, Sits idly, strumming, strumming, Under a cherry tree: A hundred shattered blossoms, Kiss throat, and hair, and wrist, And we dream, till the purple sunset Is lost in the river mist. Here is a broken zither, A senseless, soul-dead thing; Here is a broidered obi. (Those sandal perfumes cling!) Here am I cui bono? In the Land of the Afternoon. A Geisha girl is singing That same old rhymeless tune; A wing of gold and scarlet, A dream of a tiny shoe, And lips that must still tempt kisses, Just as they used to do. Over there, in the window, At number twenty-one, A row of flaming tulips Nods at the setting sun; A girl in.a red kimono Leans to tho dusty sill, And my heart is wildly dancing In the same old fashion still. She smiles as she plucks a flower, She pins it against her breast ' A truce to the days that Have Been! Tho days that Are, are best! Town Topics. |