Giovannitti sees a life on the benches of New York’s Mulberry Park.

‘A Bench in Mulberry Park’ by Arturo Giovannitti from Arrows in the Gale. Hillacre Bookhouse, Riverside, Conn. 1914.

Well, after many a year,
I see thou art still here.
Old bench, old haven of my roaming days;
And like a canopy
On royal beds, on thee
Its green pavilion still the maple sprays.

They were not sweet, indeed,
Those dreary days of need
When I, each night, would wonder here alone
Whether the dawn would hail
Another thief in jail
Or at the morgue another corpse unknown.

They were, indeed, so crude,
Those days of solitude
When hunger grinned at madness’ stony stare.—
Recall not that again.
For love has come since then
And youth has won the battle with despair.

Those songs instead evoke
That sobs and tears did choke.
And that young faith no tempest could destroy;
Recall the tunes I knew.
The dreams each morning slew.
And those that since fulfilled their task of joy.

When every roar and sound
The heartless city drowned
Into the surging ocean of the night,
To me alone would drift,
A rich and kingly gift.
The flotsam of its song for my delight.

From all these windows purred
The slumbers, and I heard,
Now and again, a cradling mother croon,
While from the roofs afar
Dropped from an old guitar
The sighs of some young lover to the moon.

Watching the clouds’ odd race
In my ecstatic maze
Meseemed that thou into their sea didst soar,
And I went sailing by,
Young Orpheus of the sky.
Like a doge in a gorgeous bucentaur.

I dreamed and dreamed all night,
Young dreams, and frail and bright.
Like little buds that never grow to bloom.
Like silver clouds that pass.
Like crickets in the grass,
Like yellow fireflies twinkling in the gloom.

Yea, I was hungry—yet
Sometimes one can forget
And hungry stomachs often find a dole.
But the young days are fleet
When one can fill with sweet
And moonlit dreams the hunger of the soul.

Ah me! they’re gone, those days
And love for me now lays
A pillow full of lullabies to sleep;
But it is hard, alack!
That memories come back
Of days that were so sad when one can’t weep.

Yet in my deepest heart
I feel a sudden smart
That I won’t tell my love and she won’t see—
Old bench, if some new wretch
His limbs on thee should stretch.

Be kind to him as thou hast been to me.

Arrows in the Gale by Arturo Giovannitti. Hillacre Bookhouse, Riverside, Conn. 1914.

PDF of original book: https://archive.org/download/cu31924022445237/cu31924022445237.pdf