Chapter 2

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-- Magnificats of stone Over the white silence of the arcs, Burning in perpetual adoration.

THE FOG

Out of the lamp-bestarred and clouded dusk-- Snaring, illuding, concealing, Magically conjuring-- Turning to fairy-coaches Beetle-backed limousines Scampering under the great Arch-- Making a decoy of blue overalls And mystery of a scarlet shawl-- Indolently-- Knowing no impediment of its sure advance-- Descends the fog.

FACES

A late snow beats With cold white fists upon the tenements-- Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters, Like tall old slatterns Pulling aprons about their heads.

Lights slanting out of Mott Street Gibber out, Or dribble through bar-room slits, Anonymous shapes Conniving behind shuttered panes Caper and disappear... Where the Bowery Is throbbing like a fistula Back of her ice-scabbed fronts.

Livid faces Glimmer in furtive doorways, Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys, Smears of faces like muddied beads, Making a ghastly rosary The night mumbles over And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper... Patrolling arcs Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line Stalk them as they pass, Silent as though accouched of the darkness, And the wind noses among them, Like a skunk That roots about the heart...

Colder: And the Elevated slams upon the silence Like a ponderous door. Then all is still again, Save for the wind fumbling over The emptily swaying faces-- The wind rummaging Like an old Jew...

Faces in glimmering rows... (No sign of the abject life-- Not even a blasphemy...) But the spindle legs keep time To a limping rhythm, And the shadows twitch upon the snow Convulsively-- As though death played With some ungainly dolls.

LABOR

DEBRIS

I love those spirits That men stand off and point at, Or shudder and hood up their souls-- Those ruined ones, Where Liberty has lodged an hour And passed like flame, Bursting asunder the too small house.

DEDICATION

I would be a torch unto your hand, A lamp upon your forehead, Labor, In the wild darkness before the Dawn That I shall never see...

We shall advance together, my Beloved, Awaiting the mighty ushering... Together we shall make the last grand charge And ride with gorgeous Death With all her spangles on And cymbals clashing... And you shall rush on exultant as I fall-- Scattering a brief fire about your feet...

Let it be so... Better--while life is quick And every pain immense and joy supreme, And all I have and am Flames upward to the dream... Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn, Burning out the wick.

THE SONG OF IRON

I

Not yet hast Thou sounded Thy clangorous music, Whose strings are under the mountains... Not yet hast Thou spoken The blooded, implacable Word...

But I hear in the Iron singing-- In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons pounding-- Thy barbaric exhortation... And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved, Answering Thy call... All my spirit is inundated with the tumultuous passion of Thy Voice, And sings exultant with the Iron, For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen...

Oh fashioned in fire-- Needing flame for Thy ultimate word-- Behold me, a cupola Poured to Thy use!

Heed not my tremulous body That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet. Break it... and cast it aside... But make of my spirit That dares and endures Thy crucible... Pour through my soul Thy molten, world-whelming song.

... Here at Thy uttermost gate Like a new Mary, I wait...

II

Charge the blast furnace, workman... Open the valves-- Drive the fires high... (Night is above the gates).

How golden-hot the ore is From the cupola spurting, Tossing the flaming petals Over the silt and furnace ash-- Blown leaves, devastating, Falling about the world...

Out of the furnace mouth-- Out of the giant mouth-- The raging, turgid, mouth-- Fall fiery blossoms Gold with the gold of buttercups In a field at sunset, Or huskier gold of dandelions, Warmed in sun-leavings, Or changing to the paler hue At the creamy hearts of primroses.

Charge the converter, workman-- Tired from the long night? But the earth shall suck up darkness-- The earth that holds so much... And out of these molten flowers, Shall shape the heavy fruit...

Then open the valves-- Drive the fires high, Your blossoms nurturing. (Day is at the gates And a young wind...)

Put by your rod, comrade, And look with me, shading your eyes... Do you not see-- Through the lucent haze Out of the converter rising-- In the spirals of fire Smiting and blinding, A shadowy shape White as a flame of sacrifice, Like a lily swaying?

III

The ore leaping in the crucibles, The ore communicant, Sending faint thrills along the leads... Fire is running along the roots of the mountains... I feel the long recoil of earth As under a mighty quickening... (Dawn is aglow in the light of the Iron...) All palpitant, I wait...

IV

Here ye, Dictators--late Lords of the Iron, Shut in your council rooms, palsied, depowered-- The blooded, implacable Word? Not whispered in cloture, one to the other, (Brother in fear of the fear of his brother...) But chanted and thundered On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron Babbling in flame...

Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled, Manacles riven and ramparts defaced... (Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling...) Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced...

Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning... Clangor of iron smashing on iron, Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder...

Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring, Battering egress through ramparted walls... Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power, Into the holocaust snorting and plunging...

Mighty converters torn from their axis, Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire, Jumbled in white-heaten masses disshapen... Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron...

Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying... Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending... Shock of leviathans prone on each other... Scaled flanks touching, ore entering ore... Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron, Tasting the turbulent fury of living, Mad with a moment's exuberant living! Crash of devastating hammers despoiling.. Hands inexorable, marring What hands had so cunningly moulded...

Structures of steel welded, subtily tempered, Marvelous wrought of the wizards of ore, Torn into octaves discordantly clashing, Chords never final but onward progressing In monstrous fusion of sound ever smiting on sound in mad vortices whirling...

Till the ear, tortured, shrieks for cessation Of the raving inharmonies hatefully mingling... The fierce obligato the steel pipes are screaming... The blare of the rude molten music of Iron...

FRANK LITTLE AT CALVARY

I

He walked under the shadow of the Hill Where men are fed into the fires And walled apart... Unarmed and alone, He summoned his mates from the pit's mouth Where tools rested on the floors And great cranes swung Unemptied, on the iron girders. And they, who were the Lords of the Hill, Were seized with a great fear, When they heard out of the silence of wheels The answer ringing In endless reverberations Under the mountain...

So they covered up their faces And crept upon him as he slept... Out of eye-holes in black cloth They looked upon him who had flung Between them and their ancient prey The frail barricade of his life... And when night--that has connived at so much-- Was heavy with the unborn day, They haled him from his bed...

Who might know of that wild ride? Only the bleak Hill-- The red Hill, vigilant, Like a blood-shot eye In the black mask of night-- Dared watch them as they raced By each blind-folded street Godiva might have ridden down... But when they stopped beside the Place, I know he turned his face Wistfully to the accessory night...

And when he saw--against the sky, Sagged like a silken net Under its load of stars-- The black bridge poised Like a gigantic spider motionless... I know there was a silence in his heart, As of a frozen sea, Where some half lifted arm, mid-way Wavers, and drops heavily...

I know he waved to life, And that life signaled back, transcending space, To each high-powered sense, So that he missed no gesture of the wind Drawing the shut leaves close... So that he saw the light on comrades' faces Of camp fires out of sight... And the savor of meat and bread Blew in his nostrils... and the breath Of unrailed spaces Where shut wild clover smelled as sweet As a virgin in her bed.

I know he looked once at America, Quiescent, with her great flanks on the globe, And once at the skies whirling above him... Then all that he had spoken against And struck against and thrust against Over the frail barricade of his life Rushed between him and the stars...

II

Life thunders on... Over the black bridge The line of lighted cars Creeps like a monstrous serpent Spooring gold...

Watchman, what of the track?

Night... silence... stars... All's Well!

III

Light... (Breaking mists... Hills gliding like hands out of a slipping hold...) Light over the pit mouths, Streaming in tenuous rays down the black gullets of the Hill... (The copper, insensate, sleeping in the buried lode.) Light... Forcing the clogged windows of arsenals... Probing with long sentient fingers in the copper chips... Gleaming metallic and cold In numberless slivers of steel... Light over the trestles and the iron clips Of the black bridge--poised like a gigantic spider motionless-- Sweet inquisition of light, like a child's wonder... Intrusive, innocently staring light That nothing appals...

Light in the slow fumbling summer leaves, Cooing and calling All winged and avid things Waking the early flies, keen to the scent... Green-jeweled iridescent flies Unerringly steering-- Swarming over the blackened lips, The young day sprays with indiscriminate gold...

Watchman, what of the Hill?

Wheels turn; The laden cars Go rumbling to the mill, And Labor walks beside the mules... All's Well with the Hill!

SPIRES

Spires of Grace Church, For you the workers of the world Travailed with the mountains... Aborting their own dreams Till the dream of you arose-- Beautiful, swaddled in stone-- Scorning their hands.

THE LEGION OF IRON

They pass through the great iron gates-- Men with eyes gravely discerning, Skilled to appraise the tunnage of cranes Or split an inch into thousandths-- Men tempered by fire as the ore is And planned to resistance Like steel that has cooled in the trough; Silent of purpose, inflexible, set to fulfilment-- To conquer, withstand, overthrow... Men mannered to large undertakings, Knowing force as a brother And power as something to play with, Seeing blood as a slip of the iron, To be wiped from the tools Lest they rust.

But what if they stood aside, Who hold the earth so careless in the crook of their arms?

What of the flamboyant cities And the lights guttering out like candles in a wind... And the armies halted... And the train mid-way on the mountain And idle men chaffing across the trenches... And the cursing and lamentation And the clamor for grain shut in the mills of the world? What if they stayed apart, Inscrutably smiling, Leaving the ground encumbered with dead wire And the sea to row-boats And the lands marooned-- Till Time should like a paralytic sit, A mildewed hulk above the nations squatting?

FUEL

What of the silence of the keys And silvery hands? The iron sings... Though bows lie broken on the strings, The fly-wheels turn eternally...

Bring fuel--drive the fires high... Throw all this artist-lumber in And foolish dreams of making things... (Ten million men are called to die.)

As for the common men apart, Who sweat to keep their common breath, And have no hour for books or art-- What dreams have these to hide from death!

A TOAST

Not your martyrs anointed of heaven-- The ages are red where they trod-- But the Hunted--the world's bitter leaven-- Who smote at your imbecile God--

A being to pander and fawn to, To propitiate, flatter and dread As a thing that your souls are in pawn to, A Dealer who traffics the dead;

A Trader with greed never sated, Who barters the souls in his snares, That were trapped in the lusts he created, For incense and masses and prayers--

They are crushed in the coils of your halters; 'Twere well--by the creeds ye have nursed-- That ye send up a cry from your altars, A mass for the Martyrs Accursed;

A passionate prayer from reprieval For the Brotherhood not understood-- For the Heroes who died for the evil, Believing the evil was good.

To the Breakers, the Bold, the Despoilers, Who dreamed of a world over-thrown... They who died for the millions of toilers-- Few--fronting the nations alone!

--To the Outlawed of men and the Branded, Whether hated or hating they fell-- I pledge the devoted, red-handed, Unfaltering Heroes of Hell!

ACCIDENTALS

"THE EVERLASTING RETURN"

It is dark... so dark, I remember the sun on Chios... It is still... so still, I hear the beat of our paddles on the Aegean...

Ten times we had watched the moon Rise like a thin white virgin out of the waters And round into a full maternity... For thrice ten moons we had touched no flesh Save the man flesh on either hand That was black and bitter and salt and scaled by the sea.

The Athenian boy sat on my left... His hair was yellow as corn steeped in wine... And on my right was Phildar the Carthaginian, Grinning Phildar With his mouth pulled taut as by reins from his black gapped teeth. Many a whip had coiled about him And his shoulders were rutted deep as wet ground under chariot wheels, And his skin was red and tough as a bull's hide cured in the sun. He did not sing like the other slaves, But when a big wind came up he screamed with it. And always he looked out to sea, Save when he tore at his fish ends Or spat across me at the Greek boy, whose mouth was red and apart like an opened fruit.

We had rowed from dawn and the green galley hard at our stern. She was green and squat and skulked close to the sea. All day the tish of their paddles had tickled our ears, And when night came on And little naked stars dabbled in the water And half the crouching moon Slid over the silver belly of the sea thick-scaled with light, We heard them singing at their oars... We who had no breath for song.

There was no sound in our boat Save the clingle of wrist chains And the sobbing of the young Greek. I cursed him that his hair blew in my mouth, tasting salt of the sea... I cursed him that his oar kept ill time... When he looked at me I cursed him again, That his eyes were soft as a woman's.

How long... since their last shell gouged our batteries? How long... since we rose at aim with a sleuth moon astern? (It was the damned green moon that nosed us out... The moon that flushed our periscope till it shone like a silver flame...)

They loosed each man's right hand As the galley spent on our decks... And amazed and bloodied we reared half up And fought askew with the left hand shackled... But a zigzag fire leapt in our sockets And knotted our thews like string... Our thews grown stiff as a crooked spine that would not straighten...

How long... since our gauges fell And the sea shoved us under? It is dark... so dark... Darkness presses hairy-hot Where three make crowded company... And the rank steel smells.... It is still... so still... I seem to hear the wind On the dimpled face of the water fathoms above...

It was still... so still... we three that were left alive Stared in each other's faces... But three make bitter company at one man's bread... And our hate grew sharp and bright as the moon's edge in the water.

One grinned with his mouth awry from the long gapped teeth... And one shivered and whined like a gull as the waves pawed us over... But one struck with his hate in his hand...

After that I remember Only the dead men's oars that flapped in the sea... The dead men's oars that rattled and clicked like idiots' tongues.

It is still... so still, with the jargon of engines quiet. We three awaiting the crunch of the sea Reach our hands in the dark and touch each other's faces... We three sheathing hate in our hearts... But when hate shall have made its circuit, Our bones will be loving company Here in the sea's den... And one whimpers and cries on his God And one sits sullenly But both draw away from me... For I am the pyre their memories burn on... Like black flames leaping Our fiery gestures light the walled-in darkness of the sea... The sea that kneels above us... And makes no sign.

PALESTINE

Old plant of Asia-- Mutilated vine Holding earth's leaping sap In every stem and shoot That lopped off, sprouts again-- Why should you seek a plateau walled about, Whose garden is the world?

THE SONG

That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron, And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine floating like cotton-down, And the harsh and terrible screaming, And that strange vibration at the roots of us... Desire, fierce, like a song... And we heard (Do you remember?) All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue And bugles in little home towns And children's harmonicas bleating

America!

And after... (Do you remember?) The drollery of the wind on our faces, And horizons reeling, And the terror of the plain Heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun... Under us--threshing and twanging Torn-up roots of the Song...

TO THE OTHERS