MANHATTAN LIGHTS
MANHATTAN
Out of the night you burn, Manhattan,
In a vesture of gold—
Span of innumerable arcs,
Flaring and multiplying—
Gold at the uttermost circles fading
Into the tenderest hint of jade,
Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues,
Robing the far-flung offices,
Scintillant-storied, forking flame,
Or soaring to luminous amethyst
Over the steeples aureoled—
Diaphanous gold,
Veiling the Woolworth, argently
Rising slender and stark
Mellifluous-shrill as a vender's cry,
And towers squatting graven and cold
On the velvet bales of the dark,
And the Singer's appraising
Indolent idol's eye,
And night like a purple cloth unrolled—
Nebulous gold
Throwing an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points,
Wherein you burn…
You of unknown voltage
Whirling on your axis…
Scrawling vermillion signatures
Over the night's velvet hoarding…
Insolent, towering spherical
To apices ever shifting.
BROADWAY
Light!
Innumerable ions of light,
Kindling, irradiating,
All to their foci tending…
Light that jingles like anklet chains
On bevies of little lithe twinkling feet,
Or clingles in myriad vibrations
Like trillions of porcelain
Vases shattering…
Light over the laminae of roofs,
Diffusing in shimmering nebulae
About the night's boundaries,
Or billowing in pearly foam
Submerging the low-lying stars…
Light for the feast prolonged—
Captive light in the goblets quivering…
Sparks evanescent
Struck of meeting looks—
Fringed eyelids leashing
Sheathed and leaping lights…
Infinite bubbles of light
Bursting, reforming…
Silvery filings of light
Incessantly falling…
Scintillant, sided dust of light
Out of the white flares of Broadway—
Like a great spurious diamond
In the night's corsage faceted…
Broadway,
In ambuscades of light,
Drawing the charmed multitudes
With the slow suction of her breath—
Dangling her naked soul
Behind the blinding gold of eunuch lights
That wind about her like a bodyguard.
Or like a huge serpent, iridescent-scaled,
Trailing her coruscating length
Over the night prostrate—
Triumphant poised,
Her hydra heads above the avenues,
Values appraising
And her avid eyes
Glistening with eternal watchfulness…
Broadway—
Out of her towers rampant,
Like an unsubtle courtezan
Reserving nought for some adventurous night.
FLOTSAM
Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
High-flung signs
Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
Girls in black
Circling monotonously
About the orange lights…
Nothing to guess at…
Save the darkness above
Crouching like a great cat.
In the dim-lit square,
Where dishevelled trees
Tustle with the wind—the wind like a scythe
Mowing their last leaves—
Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze—
Pale oval arcs
Like ailing virgins,
Each out of a halo circumscribed,
Pallidly staring…
Figures drift upon the benches
With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling—
Slovenly figures like untied parcels,
And papers wrapped about their knees
Huddled one to the other,
Cringing to the wind—
The sided wind,
Leaving no breach untried…
So many and all so still…
The fountain slobbering its stone basin
Is louder than They—
Flotsam of the five oceans
Here on this raft of the world.
This old man's head
Has found a woman's shoulder.
The wind juggles with her shawl
That flaps about them like a sail,
And splashes her red faded hair
Over the salt stubble of his chin.
A light foam is on his lips,
As though dreams surged in him
Breaking and ebbing away…
And the bare boughs shuffle above him
And the twigs rattle like dice…
She—diffused like a broken beetle—
Sprawls without grace,
Her face gray as asphalt,
Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges…
Shadows ply about her mouth—
Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree,
That dances above her its dance of dry bones.
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.