ads,
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 fain