'The Woman with the Dead Soles'

Attracted to the frozen river's brink,Where on a small impromptu snow-swept rink,The happy skaters darted left and right,Or circled amorously out of sight,Some self-supporting; some, like falling stars,Spread-eagling ankle-weak parabolas;I watched the human swarm, and I was 'wareA woman, disarranged, knelt on a chair.She had cold feet on which she could not run,And piteously she thawed them in the sun.Those feet were of a woman that aloneWas kneeling; a pink liquid by her shone,Which raising to her luminous, lantern jaw,She sipped; or idly stirred it with a straw.Upon her hat she wore a kind of fowl,An hummingbird, I ween, or else an owl.Then turned to me. I looked the other way,Trembling; I knew the words she wished to say.So warm her gaze the blood rushed to my head,Instinctively I knew her feet were dead.Amorphous feet, like monumental moons,Pavement-obliterating, vast, pontoons,Superbly varnished, to the ice had come,And now, snow-kissed, frost-fettered, dangled numb.Gently she spoke,--the while my senses whirled,Of 'largest circulations in the world';Wildly she spoke, as babble men in dreams,Of feeling life's blood 'rushing to extremes';But I ignored her with deliberate stare,Until the indelicate thing began to swear.Sensations as of pins and needles rose,Apollinaris-like, in tingled toes.She felt the hungry frost that punctured holes,Like concentrated seidlitz, in her soles.Feebly she stept; and sudden was awareHer feet had gone,--they were no longer there,--And from her boots was willing to be freed;She would not keep what she could never need.Sullenly I consented, and withdrewFrom either heel a huge chaotic shoe;Yet for a time laboriously and slowShe journeyed with her ponderous boots, as thoughAlong with her she could not help but bearThe bargelike burdens she was wont to wear.Towards me she reeled; and 'Oh! my Uncle,' cried,'My Uncle!' but I pushed her to one side,Then smiled upon her so she could not stay,--(My smile can frighten motor-cars away):--While thus I grinned, not knowing what to do,A belted beadle, in immaculate blue,Plucked at my sleeve, and shattered my romance,Wheeling on cushion tires an ambulance.Deliberately then he laid her there,Tucked in and bore away; I did not care!