Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

M I D N I G H T O N
B E N E F I T S T R E E T
MIDNIGHT ON BENEFIT STREET,
1935
Three hundred years ago it was a footpath
winding among family grave plots —
moved, all moved —
at least the stones were moved —
to pave and straighten.
Now it is a strange amalgam
of mansions and squalor,
every other streetlight shattered,
every other doorway an entrance
into vice and delirium.
John Brown’s mansion lords over the street,
aloof at the end of its ponderous lawn,
high fence upon a looming wall
so you are always beneath them,
going about your business unnoticed.
Ear pressed to those stones,
what might you hear
beneath the slurry of earthworms —
what muffled groans and chain-clanks?
Or maybe the slip-slide of silk
upon the polished floor, the fumbling
for a long-forgotten key
to the snug merchant cabinets and cubbyholes
stuffed with lost bags of silver coins?