Preludes BY T. S. ELIOT
![The Street, by Alfred Stieglitz (1903)](https://www.mwgerard.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/large.jpg)
I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.