glancing
  At the secret meeting in this shut-in room,
  Bare as a manger.

VIII

  Lights go out
  And the stark trunks of the factories
  Melt into the drawn darkness,
  Sheathing like a seamless garment.

  And mothers take home their babies,
  Waxen and delicately curled,
  Like little potted flowers closed under the stars.

  Lights go out
  And the young men shut their eyes,
  But life turns in them…

  Life in the cramped ova
  Tearing and rending asunder its living cells…
  Wars, arts, discoveries, rebellions, travails, immolations,
       cataclysms, hates…
  Pent in the shut flesh.
  And the young men twist on their beds in languor and dizziness
       unsupportable…
  Their eyes—heavy and dimmed
  With dust of long oblivions in the gray pulp behind—
  Staring as through a choked glass.
  And they gaze at the moon—throwing off a faint heat—
  The moon, blond and burning, creeping to their cots
  Softly, as on naked feet…
  Lolling on the coverlet… like a woman offering her white body.

  Nude glory of the moon!
  That leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped
       of their linens;
  Stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother-of-pearl
  Till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them.
  They shudder and grow faint.
  And their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody,
  That Life, like a drunken player,
  Strikes out of their clear white bodies
  As out of ivory keys.

  Lights go out…
  And the great lovers linger in little groups, still passionately debating,
  Or one may walk in silence, listening only to the still summons of Life—
  Life making the great Demand…
  Calling its new Christs…
  Till tears come, blurring the stars
  That grow tender and comforting like the eyes of comrades;
  And the moon rolls behind the Battery
  Like a word molten out of the mouth of God.

  Lights go out…
  And colors rush together,
  Fusing and floating away…
  Pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels…
  Mauves, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples
  And burning spires in aureoles of light
  Like shimmering auras.

  They are covering up the pushcarts…
  Now all have gone save an old man with mirrors—
  Little oval mirrors like tiny pools.
  He shuffles up a darkened street
  And the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus…
  The moon like a skull,
  Staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the pushcarts.

IX

  A sallow dawn is in the sky
  As I enter my little green room.
  Sadie's light is still burning…
  Without, the frail moon
  Worn to a silvery tissue,
  Throws a faint glamour on the roofs,
  And down the shadowy spires
  Lights tip-toe out…
  Softly as when lovers close street doors.

  Out of the Battery
  A little wind
  Stirs idly—as an arm
  Trails over a boat's side in dalliance—
  Rippling the smooth dead surface of the heat,
  And Hester street,
  Like a forlorn woman over-born
  By many babies at her teats,
  Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day.

  LIFE!
  Startling, vigorous life,
  That squirms under my touch,
  And baffles me when I try to examine it,
  Or hurls me back without apology.
  Leaving my ego ruffled and preening itself.

  Life,
  Articulate, shrill,
  Screaming in provocative assertion,
  Or out of the black and clotted gutters,
  Piping in silvery thin
  Sweet staccato
  Of children's laughter,

  Or clinging over the pushcarts
  Like a litter of tiny bells
  Or the jingle of silver coins,
  Perpetually changing hands,
  Or like the Jordan somberly
  Swirling in tumultuous uncharted tides,
  Surface-calm.

  Electric currents of life,
  Throwing off thoughts like sparks,
  Glittering, disappearing,
  Making unknown circuits,
  Or out of spent particles stirring
  Feeble contortions in old faiths
  Passing before the new.

  Long nights argued away
  In meeting halls
  Back of interminable stairways—
  In Roumanian wine-shops
  And little Russian tea-rooms…

  Feet echoing through deserted streets
  In the soft darkness before dawn…
  Brows aching, throbbing, burning—
  Life leaping in the shaken flesh
  Like flame at an asbestos curtain.

  Life—
  Pent, overflowing
  Stoops and façades,
  Jostling, pushing, contriving,
  Seething as in a great vat…

  Bartering, changing, extorting,
  Dreaming, debating, aspiring,
  Astounding, indestructible
  Life of the Ghetto…

  Strong flux of life,
  Like a bitter wine
  Out of the bloody stills of the world…
  Out of the Passion eternal.

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