Smoke and Steel
75
FOUR PRELUDES ON PLAYTHINGS OF THE WIND
"The past is a bucket of ashes."
1
The woman named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls : Well, what of it ?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.
2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted :
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.
