Preludes

Part I

The speaker describes a rather dismal urban scene in the winter. The time is given precisely: It is six o’clock in the evening, and the workers are coming home from their jobs and cooking their steak dinners. They are likely lodging in a tenement house, a building divided up into cheap rental rooms or apartments. The smell of the steaks being cooked wafts into the “passageways” (Line 2) that separate the rooms. “The burnt-out ends of smoky days” (Line 4) refers to cigarette butts and the habit of smoking a lot during the day and the evening. This is clearly a lower-working-class environment. The tenement building is run-down, as suggested by the “broken blinds” (Line 10). Outside, it is raining and windy; leaves and newspapers are being blown around in the street. The leaves are “withered” (Line 7) and dirty (“grimy scraps” [Line 6]). There is nothing beautiful or appealing about them; they are part of the general detritus of the street scene, as are the newspapers blown across from “vacant lots” (Line 8)—empty fields where no one has yet built and that are likely strewn with debris of various kinds.

Although the streets and dwellings are crowded with people, the speaker does not describe any of them directly.