Old Woman
The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo From building and battered paving-stone. The headlight scoffs at the mist, And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain; Against a pane I press my forehead And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks. The headlight finds the way And life is gone from the wet and the welter-- Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared. Far-wandered waif of other days, Huddles for sleep in a doorway, Homeless.
It's a description of the poet looking sleepily out the window of a rainy late-night cable-car through a city seemingly deserted; except for the glimpse of a homeless old woman asleep in a doorway. She is ugly, but he briefly reflects that this vagrant once was young and appealing. It's a bleak mood poem.