Tulips

Tulip time!
Like painted chorus girls
in pantomime,
with corrugated curls
and nearly naked flanks;
with scarlet lips
and sinuous hips,
they dance
in gaudy, stiff phalanx.

Tulip time!
In reds
and glaring yellows, like gas flares
on market sheds;
in coarsely painted spots and smears
of pink and gold, and pink and white,
they toe and heel
and bob and wheel
their yankee tricks, stilted, trite.

Tulip time!
In fickle April Sun,
in city grime,
they flaunt their theatre frocks
in regimental lines and blocks,
and toss their curls
like chorus girls
in some Revue American.