Beverly Hills, Chicago

By Gwendolyn Brooks

“and the people live till they have white hair” ―E. M. Price

The dry brown coughing beneath their feet,

(Only for a while, for the handyman is on his way)

These people walk their golden gardens.

We say ourselves fortunate to be driving by today.

That we may look at them, in their gardens where

The summer ripeness rots. But not raggedly.

Even the leaves fall down in lovelier patterns here.

And the refuse, the refuse is a neat brilliancy.

When they flow sweetly into their houses

With softness and slowness touched by that everlasting gold,

We know what they go to. To tea. But that does not mean

They will throw some little black dots into some water and add sugar and

the juice of the cheapest lemons that are sold,

While downstairs that woman’s vague phonograph bleats, “Knock me a kiss.”

And the living all to be made again in the sweatingest physical manner

Tomorrow. . . . Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble.

Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner.

Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And

Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours.

It is just that so often they live till their hair is white.

They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers. . . .

Nobody is furious. Nobody hates these people.

At least, nobody driving by in this car.

It is only natural, however, that it should occur to us

How much more fortunate they are than we are.

It is only natural that we should look and look

At their wood and brick and stone

And think, while a breath of pine blows,

How different these are from our own.

We do not want them to have less.

But it is only natural that we should think we have not enough.

We drive on, we drive on.

When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff.