They pass through the great iron g… Men with eyes gravely discerning, Skilled to appraise the tunnage of… Or split an inch into thousandths… Men tempered by fire as the ore is

The earth is motionless And poised in space .... A great bird resting in its flight Between the alleys of the stars. It is the wind’s hour off ....

Drab discoloration Of faces, façades, pawn-shops, Second-hand clothing, Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch… Odors of rancid life’€¦

Your love was like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty, so that little wry souls reflecting each other obliquely as in cracked mirrors’€¦ beheld in your luminous spirit their own r...

Not your martyrs anointed of heave… The ages are red where they trod - But the Hunted - the world’s bitt… Who smote at your imbecile God - A being to pander and fawn to,

Warped... gland-dry... With spine askew And body shrunken into half its sp… Well-used as some cracked paving-s… Bearing on his grimed and pitted f…

Old plant of Asia - Mutilated vine Holding earth’s leaping sap In every stem and shoot That lopped off, sprouts again -

How should they appraise you, who… Only time standing well off shall…

Cool, inaccessible air Is floating in velvety blackness s… But no breath stirs the heat Leaning its ponderous bulk upon th… And most on Hester street…

When you tell mama you are going to do something grea… she looks at you as though you were a window she were trying to see through,

What of the silence of the keys And silvery hands? The iron sings… Though bows lie broken on the stri… The fly-wheels turn eternally’€¦ Bring fuel - drive the fires high’…

We are old, Old as song. Before Rome was Or Cyrene. Mad nights knew us

Long vast shapes... cooled and flu… Lidless windows Glazed with a flashy luster From some little pert café chirpin… And down among iron guts

Radiant notes piercing my narrow-chested room, beating down through my ceiling - smeared with unshapen belly-prints of dreams

Pythoness body—arching Over the night like an ecstasy— I feel your coils tightening... And the world’s lessening breath.