Unit 5: Selection Vocabulary 1

The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds.

I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days.

I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle.

I may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.

Why do you start and wince
When white folk stare at you?

What are you seeking,
What would you have?

Nothing but people clad
In Coats, Coats, Coats

A city of coated people
But little to charm the eye.

Why do you look so hard
At the Bobbies
And the book stalls
And the City Lights?

Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep...tired...or it malingers.

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use