Escape

I would I might find a city in some distant land
Of shadowed waters, shivering dark under long stretching clouds;
Where winds lift torn straggling edges of a grey-furied storm
And show the leaping pulse of sunset blood beneath;
And I might see swirling mists glide like slim ghosts, up the river;
I would be such a stranger. No visitors would ever come bounding up my stair,
No strident voices, nor unseemly laughter to break the nocturne in the evening air.

—Vesta Emanuel.