Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Fifth Avenue Sky-scrapers

Alice D. Lippman

WE are the phantoms of mortar and brick

Slapped against patches of sky,

Stretching our taut, slender bodies

Into the clouds.

Under us endless masses of people, endlessly walking

Somewhere, nowhere;

Endlessly swallowed by us

Who house them, feed them, clothe them,

Followed by masses of others, endlessly walking.

We do not walk.

We have mounted the pace of men’s minds that have made us—

Made us the thing that we are,

The sphinx of a world that is new, yet blind as the old.

They do not see us—the sphinx,

The soul of themselves.

For they are aimlessly walking—

Anywhere, nowhere—

Walking to deaden the hour,

Walking toward life,

Walking toward death,

Somewhere….