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—