Chapter II

A uniformed front,
Paunched;
A glance like a blow,
The swing of an arm,
Verved, vigorous;
Boot-heels clanking
In metallic rhythm;
The blows of a baton,
Quick, staccato...

--There is a rustling along the benches
As of dried leaves raked over...
And the old man lifts a shaking palsied hand,
Tucking the displaced paper about his knees.

Colder...
And a frost under foot,
Acid, corroding,
Eating through worn bootsoles.

Drab forms blur into greenish vapor.
Through boughs like cross-bones,
Pale arcs flare and shiver
Like lilies in a wind.

High over Broadway
A far-flung sign
Glitters in indigo darkness
And spurts again rhythmically,
Spraying great drops
Red as a hemorrhage.

SPRING

A spring wind on the Bowery,
Blowing the fluff of night shelters
Off bedraggled garments,
And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor
Like lewd growths.

Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other,
One--with a choir-boy's face
Twits me as I pass...
The word, like a muddied drop,
Seems to roll over and not out of
The bowed lips,
Yet dewy red
And sweetly immature.

People sniff the air with an upward look--
Even the mite of a girl
Who never plays...
Her mother smiles at her
With eyes like vacant lots
Rimming vistas of mean streets
And endless washing days...
Yet with sun on the lines
And a drying breeze.

The old candy woman
Shivers in the young wind.
Her eyes--littered with memories
Like ancient garrets,
Or dusty unaired rooms where someone died--
Ask nothing of the spring.

But a pale pink dream
Trembles about this young girl's body,
Draping it like a glowing aura.

She gloats in a mirror
Over her gaudy hat,
With its flower God never thought of...

And the dream, unrestrained,
Floats about the loins of a soldier,
Where it quivers a moment,
Warming to a crimson
Like the scarf of a toreador...

But the delicate gossamer breaks at his contact
And recoils to her in strands of shattered rose.

BOWERY AFTERNOON

Drab discoloration
Of faces, façades, pawn-shops,
Second-hand clothing,
Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms,
Odors of rancid life...

Deadly uniformity
Of eyes and windows
Alike devoid of light...
Holes wherein life scratches--
Mangy life
Nosing to the gutter's end...

Show-rooms and mimic pillars
Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules
Bosoms and posturing thighs...

Over all the Elevated
Droning like a bloated fly.

PROMENADE

Undulant rustlings,
Of oncoming silk,
Rhythmic, incessant,
Like the motion of leaves...
Fragments of color
In glowing surprises...
Pink inuendoes
Hooded in gray
Like buds in a cobweb
Pearled at dawn...
Glimpses of green
And blurs of gold
And delicate mauves
That snatch at youth...
And bodies all rosily
Fleshed for the airing,
In warm velvety surges
Passing imperious, slow...

Women drift into the limousines
That shut like silken caskets
On gems half weary of their glittering...
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...

Colder:
And the Elevated slams upon the silence
Like a ponderous door.
Then all is still again,
Save for the wind fumbling over
The emptily swaying faces--
The wind rummaging
Like an old Jew...

Faces in glimmering rows...
(No sign of the abject life--
Not even a blasphemy...)
But the spindle legs keep time
To a limping rhythm,
And the shadows twitch upon the snow
Convulsively--
As though death played
With some ungainly dolls.

LABOR

DEBRIS

I love those spirits
That men stand off and point at,
Or shudder and hood up their souls--
Those ruined ones,
Where Liberty has lodged an hour
And passed like flame,
Bursting asunder the too small house.

DEDICATION

I would be a torch unto your hand,
A lamp upon your forehead, Labor,
In the wild darkness before the Dawn
That I shall never see...

We shall advance together, my Beloved,
Awaiting the mighty ushering...
Together we shall make the last grand charge
And ride with gorgeous Death
With all her spangles on
And cymbals clashing...
And you shall rush on exultant as I fall--
Scattering a brief fire about your feet...

Let it be so...
Better--while life is quick
And every pain immense and joy supreme,
And all I have and am
Flames upward to the dream...
Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn,
Burning out the wick.

THE SONG OF IRON

I

Not yet hast Thou sounded
Thy clangorous music,
Whose strings are under the mountains...
Not yet hast Thou spoken
The blooded, implacable Word...

But I hear in the Iron singing--
In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons pounding--
Thy barbaric exhortation...
And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved,
Answering Thy call...
All my spirit is inundated with the tumultuous passion of Thy Voice,
And sings exultant with the Iron,
For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen...

Oh fashioned in fire--
Needing flame for Thy ultimate word--
Behold me, a cupola
Poured to Thy use!

Heed not my tremulous body
That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet.
Break it... and cast it aside...
But make of my spirit
That dares and endures
Thy crucible...
Pour through my soul
Thy molten, world-whelming song.

... Here at Thy uttermost gate
Like a new Mary, I wait...