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.