Después de la Ópera

Down the stone stairs
girls with theri large eyes wide with tragedy
lift looks of shocked and momentous emotions up at me.
And I smile.

Ladies
stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet
peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out of the wreckage,
and among the wreck of the theatre crowd
I stand and smile.

They take tragedy so becomingly.
Which please me.

But when I meet the weary eyes
the reddened asching eyes of the bar-man with thin arms,
I am glad to go back to the place where I came from.


After the Opera
D.H. Lawrence