Explore "New York City" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ 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.