Edward Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning" (1930)

Horizontal
Paint, seven
Layers of color
Stacked in Sunday
Clean.

Morning blue
Sky; then
Shadowed eaves,
Then becurtained,
Ledged windows
Facing from
The yet asleep,
The almost awakened;
Yellow. Black, white
On red, perhaps brick;
They still used
Brick in 1930.

Then layer of floor
And ceiling, bottom
And top
To separate the
Sleeping from
Empty stores, all
Commerce ceased.
They still closed stores
On 1930 Sundays.

Sand-colored sidewalk,
Divided
From sand-colored street
By thinnest of
Shaded rises.

And what of
Pudgy hydrant,
Fat with ready
Flow,
And ribboned pole
Of barbers?
Vertical incongruities
Amid the horizontal,
The exceptions
To suggest a rule,
Perhaps.
They, too, cast
Their horizontal
Shadows, the rule
Flowing even
From the exceptions.
Or do the shadows,
Transparent stains
On sidewalks,
Cast hydrant and pole?

Early Sunday morning
Of angled sun and
Horizontal emptiness.
Empty street, devoid
Of movement;
Empty sidewalk,
Devoid of feet;
Empty doorway,
Devoid of welcoming
Proprietor;
Empty windows,
Devoid of faces
Welcoming the day.
Empty sky, devoid
Of clouds or birds.

Only the shadows
Break the silence.

Early Sunday Morning (1930) by Edward Hopper; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York