..
Lamps open like pale moon flowers...
Arcs are radiant opals
Strewn along the dusk...
No common lights invade.
And spires rise like litanies--
Magnificats of stone
Over the white silence of the arcs,
Burning in perpetual adoration.
THE FOG
Out of the lamp-bestarred and clouded dusk--
Snaring, illuding, concealing,
Magically conjuring--
Turning to fairy-coaches
Beetle-backed limousines
Scampering under the great Arch--
Making a decoy of blue overalls
And mystery of a scarlet shawl--
Indolently--
Knowing no impediment of its sure advance--
Descends the fog.
FACES
A late snow beats
With cold white fists upon the tenements--
Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters,
Like tall old slatterns
Pulling aprons about their heads.
Lights slanting out of Mott Street
Gibber out,
Or dribble through bar-room slits,
Anonymous shapes
Conniving behind shuttered panes
Caper and disappear...
Where the Bowery
Is throbbing like a fistula
Back of her ice-scabbed fronts.
Livid faces
Glimmer in furtive doorways,
Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys,
Smears of faces like muddied beads,
Making a ghastly rosary
The night mumbles over
And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper...
Patrolling arcs
Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line
Stalk them as they pass,
Silent as though accouched of the darkness,
And the wind noses among them,
Like a skunk
That roots about the heart.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41