"People" by D.H. Lawrence

People

by D. H. Lawrence

The great gold apples of night

Hang from the street's long bough

Dripping their light

On the faces that drift below,

On the faces that drift and blow

Down the night-time, out of sight

In the wind's sad sough.

The ripeness of these apples of night

Distilling over me

Makes sickening the white

Ghost-flux of faces that hie

Them endlessly, endlessly by

Without meaning or reason why

They ever should be.

Source: Poetry (July 1918).

A while ago, I wrote a poem or a prose piece about walking in the evening when I was a young teenager in the empty streets of a small California city. It was a new city, paved and each street had sidewalks with new trees planted along side new California style ranch houses. There wasn't enough neon lights then so the sky was clear with stars and a moon.

The housing project was built in the late 1950's to take care of the new population of people moving from government housing that was being closed down in other parts of the larger city to the north. Many of the people worked in aircraft factories such as Rohr, Solar, Convair that was located not to far away and we were all white families with stay at home mothers and all of us were from other states who had relocated there because

of the U.S. Navy. When the men were discharged, they decided to stay. My father was from Arkansas but was in the U.S. Army, but worked at Solar.

I was barely 13 years old and living in a very dysfunctional family. Still, the place was safe then. In the evening it was better to be walking the streets than in a house where my very sad and drunk father was swinging at the world and my mother was cowling in a corner. The housing project w

as built up from the south end of the bay and the Pacific Ocean could also be scene as well as a few island out at sea.

It was astonishingly beautiful view. I would watch the sun descend westward over the ocean and the stars appear. I never saw anyone else walking those wide and clear streets. I had to be careful of the teens driving their hot rods but they were not watching the scenery. I would see falling stars and a moon that looked as if the young trees would almost touch them.

I smelled spaghetti sauce, meatloaf, and hear the incessant television sets which were in black and white then. I heard the laughter tracks that accompanied I Love Lucy, The Jackie Gleason Show and the music from The Perry Mason Show. Sometimes, I heard someone ask for their beer or to turn up the sets or some baby crying somewhere. There was always some dog barking no doubt tied up in the back of someone's yard. I used to run into them when I tried to take short cuts now and then. They always sounded so lonely.

D.H. Lawrence said all that I wanted to say in his short poem, "People". His poem made me feel sad for those who were imprisoned in those track homes.

I took so many walks and never regretted not being able to stay in my family's home. I remember one walk in which a falling star touched the top of a tree next to me. I remember so many beautiful skies that reminded me of the stories I read of Greek Mythology. I remember one boy named Mike Sweeny who I had this crush on made fun of me for walking as he got out of his parents car and walked into his parents' house. Even that did not bother me. The sky was so splendid that night.