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Home: Poetry: Conrad Aiken: The Tower
| THE TOWER |
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a poem by Conrad Aiken
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- One, from his high bright window in a tower,
- Leans out, as evening falls,
- And sees the advancing curtain of the shower
- Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:
- Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,
- And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,
- Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,
- And silver falling from eave and tree.
- One, from his high bright window, looking down,
- Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,
- And thinks its towers are like a dream.
- The western windows flame in the sun's last flare,
- Pale roofs begin to gleam.
- Looking down from a window high in a wall
- He sees us all;
- Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
- Searching the sky, and going our ways again,
- Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .
- There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees
- What we are blind to,--we who mass and crowd
- From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.
- The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
- Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;
- Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.
- The yellow lamps wink one by one again.
- The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.
| "The Tower" is reprinted from The House of Dust: A Symphony. Conrad Aiken. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1920. |
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