NIGHTSTAFF: A poem

October, 1954: the Record building, 119 Wellington St. N.

Clackety-clack, clackety-clack, clackety-clack ...
Clack ... clack ...

He punched the keys once more ... clackety-clack ...
Squinted down to the little black letters,
Tore out the faint yellow sheet,
And pushed back his chair...

The teletype muttered noisily on, then ...
Ding!...

The silence flowed into the stale office,
Then out the door and down the stairs.
Pausing on the cold stone steps ...
He sipped the 4 a.m. air,
Washing away the newsprint on his tongue,
And hunched his shoulders into the
Long, narrow street ...

The wind whispered lost among the gray buildings
That jumbled high and thin into the city's gray mist...
A shiny little restaurant squeaked restlessly,
And blinked one red, bleary neon eye...
The black street stretched in slumber,
And gurgled in its gutters...
Bleakness glazed a thousand lidless windows...

He listened as he walked...
His footsteps echoed on the empty sidewalk...
A train whistle mourned and trailed away...
The morning's snore tugged a sleeping flag
Into unconscious flapping,
And frightened the damp dust into gray, ghostly shapes...
He turned a clean, yawning corner,
Stepping into the piled vacantness of a
Tall tenement row.

The wind sighed behind him,
Picked up the rumpled newspaper on the city sidewalk,
And blew yesterday's headlines
Into a dark, blank alleyway...

In the stale office
The teletype muttered noisily, then ...
Ding!...
And the silence flowed in again.

H.D.