Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar,

Where on the tables, chattering white,
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.

Those colored muslin blinds, the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces; and at whiles

They splash like a thin water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).

The conversations, loud and bright,
Seem spinal bars of shunting light

In firework-spirting greenery.
O complicate machinery

For building Babel! Iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane

In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!

Outside the bar, where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat,

A concertina's glycerine
Exudes and mirrors in the green

Your soul, pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.