I leave the gaunt, gray city some good, green miles away,
A terrible dream in granite, a riot of streets and brick
A frantic nightmare of people until the soul turns sick—
Such is the high, gray city with the live green waters ’round
Oozing up from the Ocean, slipping in from the Sound.
I’d put up in the Bowery for nights in a ten-cent bed
Where the dinky “L” trains thunder and rattle overhead;
I’d traipsed the barren pavements with pain of frost in my feet;
I’d sidled to hotel kitchens and asked for something to eat.
But when the snow went dripping, and the young spring came as one