and a hurricane of black pigeons

splashing in the putrid waters.

Dawn in New York groans

on enormous fire escapes

searching between the angles

for spikenards of drafted anguish.

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth

because morning and hope are impossible there:

sometimes the furious swarming coins

penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

Those who go out early know in their bones

there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:

they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,

in mindless games, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried under chains and noises

in the impudent challenge of rootless science.

And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs

as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.