Poetry

A Magazine of Verse

JANUARY, 1917

VOL. IX
No. IV

THE NEWS

HE buzzer boomed, and instantly the clang
Of hammers dropped, just as the fendered

bow

Bumped with soft splash against the wharf;
though now

Again within the Yard a hammer rang―
A solitary hammer striking steel

Somewhere aloft-and strangely, stridently
Echoed as though it struck the steely sky-
The low, cold, steely sky.

She seemed to feel

That hammer in her heart-blow after blow
In a strange clanging hollow seemed to strike
Monotonous, unrelenting, cruel-like,

Her heart that such a little while ago

Had been so full, so happy with its news
Scarce uttered even to itself.

It stopped,

That dreadful hammer. And the silence dropped
Again a moment. Then a clatter of shoes

And murmur of voices as the men trooped out:
And as each wife with basket and hot can
Hurried towards the gate to meet her man,
She too ran forward, and then stood in doubt
Because among them all she could not see
The face that usually was first of all

To meet her eyes.

Against the grimy wall

That towered black above her to the sky,
With trembling knuckles to the cold stone pressed
Till the grit seemed to eat into the bone,

And her stretched arm to shake the solid stone,
She stood, and strove to calm her troubled breast-
Her breast, whose trouble of strange happiness,
So sweet and so miraculous as she

Had stood among the chattering company
Upon the ferry-boat, to strange distress

Was changed. An unknown terror seemed to lie
For her behind that wall, so cold and hard
And black above her, in the unseen Yard,
Dreadfully quiet now.

Then with a sigh

Of glad relief she ran towards the gate
As he came slowly out, the last of all.

The News

The terror of the hammer and the wall

Fell from her as, a woman to her mate,

She moved with happy heart and smile of greeting-
A young and happy wife whose only thought

Was whether he would like the food she'd brought,
Whose one desire, to watch her husband eating.

With a grave smile he took his bait from her,
And then without a word they moved away,
To where some grimy baulks of timber lay
Beside the river, and 'twas quieter

Than in the crowd of munching, squatting men
And chattering wives and children. As he eat,
With absent eyes upon the river set,

She chattered too a little now and then

Of household happenings; and then silently
They sat and watched the grimy-flowing stream,
Dazed by the stunning din of hissing steam
Escaping from an anchored boat hard by;

Each busy with their own thoughts, who till now
Had shared each thought, each feeling, speaking out
Easily, eagerly, without a doubt,

As innocent, happy children, anyhow,

The innermost secrets of their wedded life.

So, as the dinner hour went swiftly by,

They sat there for the first time, troubled, shy—

A silent husband a silent wife.