  New York, it would be easy to revile The flatly carnal beggar in your smile, And flagellate, with a superior bliss, The gasping routines of your avarice. Loud men reward you with an obvious ax, Or piteous laurel-wreath, and their attacks And eulogies blend to a common sin. New York, perhaps an intellectual grin That brings its bright cohesion to the warm Confusion of the heart, can mold your swarm Of huge, drab blunders into smaller grace ... With old words I shall gamble for your face. The evening kneels between your filthy brick, Darkly indifferent to each scheme and trick With which your men insult and smudge their day. When evenings metaphysically pray Above the weakening dance of men, they find That every eye that looks at them is blind. And yet, New York, I say that evenings free An insolently mystic majesty From your parades of automatic greed. For one dark moment all your narrow speed Receives the fighting blackness of a soul, And every nervous lie swings to a whole— A pilgrim, blurred yet proud, who finds in black An arrogance that fills his straining lack. Between your undistinguished crates of stone And wood, the wounded dwarfs who walked alone— The chorus-girls, whose indiscretions hang Between the scavengers of rouge and slang; The women moulding painfully a fresh Excuse for pliant treacheries of flesh; Convinced that it can kill the lunge of greed; The thieves whose poisoned vanity purloins A fancied victory from ringing coins; The staidly bloated men whose minds have sold Their quickness to an old, metallic Scold; The neatly cultured men whose hopes and fears Dwell in soft prisons honored by past years; The men whose tortured youth bends to the task Of hardening offal to a swaggering mask— The night, with black hands, gathers each mistake And strokes a mystic challenge from each ache. The night, New York, sardonic and alert, Offers a soul to your reluctant dirt. |
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