Poem 5

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

written by modernist poet William Carlos Williams on a warm July night in Manhattan, in 1921.   In 1928, painter Charles Demuth, a friend of the poet, painted a canvas  deploying cubist fragmentation and layering, and containing numbers and letters.  The painting includes red blocks with shifting edges which form the fire truck.  From the center, the concentric fives radiate forward, the smallest in back is bright yellow, the middle five in gold leaf, and the largest is shadowed with tan.  All very effective.   This is a brief description which is part of a review in the WSJ, 12/29/12, by John Wilmerding.  The painting hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.