#the stenographers

After the brief bivouac of Sunday, their eyes, in the forced march of Monday to Saturday, hoist the white flag, flutter in the snow-storm of paper, haul it down and crack in the mid-sun of temper.

In the pause between the first draft and the carbon they glimpse the smooth hours when they were children-- the ride in the ice-cart, the ice-man's name, the end of the route and the long walk home;

remember the sea where floats at high tide where sea marrows growing on the scatter-green vine or spools of grey toffee, or wasps' nests on water; remember the sand and leaves of the country.

Bell rings and they go and the voice draws their pencil like a sled across snow; when its runners are frozen rope snaps and the voice then is pulling no burden but runs like a dog on the winter of paper.

Their climates are winter and summer--no wind for the kites of their hearts--no wind for a flight; a breeze at most, to tumble them over and leave them like rubbish--the boy-friends of blood.

In the inch of the noon as they move they are stagnant. The terrible calm of the noon is their anguish; the lip of the counter, the shapes of the straws like icicles breaking their tongues, are invaders.

Their beds are their oceans--salt water of weeping the waves that they now--the tide before sleep; and fighting to drown they assemble their sheep in columns and watch them leap desks for their fences

and stare at them with their own mirror-worn faces. In the felt of the morning the calico-minded, sufficiently starched, insert papers, hit keys, efficient and sure as their adding machines;