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PULLMAN PORTRAITS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Down the green plush lane, at the forward end of the car
Last Line: "are we late? How late? Do you think we can make it up?"
Alternate Author Name(s): Young, Sanborn, Mrs.
Subject(s): Sonnet (as Literary Form)


I

Down the green plush lane, at the forward end of the car,
There are seven Iowa farmers' tired old wives
With their faces set toward the perfumed orange groves
For a lyrical end to their prosy, cumbered lives;
And all day long with their red, work-twisted hands
On their black silk laps they idle, they rest, they play;
They badger the grime-gray brakemen, make new friends --
"Say, Pa, this gentleman here's from Ioway!"

II

While the bored, late breakfast crowd in the diner fumed
And a thin man snarled that his coffee wasn't hot,
I saw them carry her by with clumsy haste --
A silent, sagging shape on a sagging cot,
And all day long there seeps through my noisy car,
Through the tight-shut, shining door of the drawing-room,
The sense of a breathless race with hours and miles . . .
The sense of doom, of imminent, hovering doom;
And whenever the loose-limbed brakeman hurtles through,
Frolicsome-shy as a sidling setter pup,
The mother's jerking face at the crack of the door --
"Are we late? How late? Do you think we can make it up?"

III

There's an old young soldier raptly hurrying home
With a line of shining deeds across his coat,
But the scar far back in his aching-tired eyes
Is a deeper scar than the one along his throat,
And all day long I am watching him realize . . .
That the show is done; he has missed his cue; he's late;
The bands are stilled and the WELCOME signs are down,
And his shining deeds -- his war -- is out of date!

IV

A big, thick-wristed man in the section across;
The delicate, fresh-dressed woman by his side
With the look in her face of a stale, warmed-over dream,
Is a bride, a pitiful, tardy, Autumn bride,
And all day long, sitting still in her green plush seat,
She escapes, she flees, she hides . . . till the train's harsh tune
Summons her back to the touch of his thick, cold hand,
To bring her November heart to the feast of June.
. . . . . . . .
Can they ever learn to rest in their orange groves?
Is the engine aware of the drawing-room's tragic need? --
And the soldier's eyes -- and the dream that stood too long?
I am tense with the urge for a greater, kinder speed;
And all day long, till the desert sun slides down
And the farmers' wives are noisy with plate and cup,
Now soft, now shrill, four-keyed, it pierces through . . .
"Are we late? How late? Do you think we can make it up?"





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