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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Laura Sherry

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Bohemian Town

Laura Sherry

From “A Town on the River”

AN ARMY of geese cross the prairie by day.

At sun-down they stream in grey and white processionals through the streets;

Bohemian Joe sits on his stoop

Dreaming into the smoke of his pipe,

Dreaming of a boy in Bohemia.

Back of him lies a settlement of squat houses,

And women with flowered shawls are calling the geese.

The gleaming coaches of the Burlington express

Flash through the street in front of him.

Beyond the railroad track lives another race.

Bohemian Joe has not learned the new language and the new ways,

But his children have crossed the track

And are teaching American in the public schools.