Shoes that danced and other poems / Anna Hempstead Branch [electronic text]

SONNETS FOR NEW YORK CITY

I

NEW YORK AT SUNRISE

WHEN with her clouds the early dawn illumes Our doubtful streets, wistful they grow and mild As if a sleeping soul grew happy and smiled, The whole dark city radiantly blooms. Pale spires lift their hands above the glooms Like a resurrection, delicately wild, And flushed with slumber like a little child, Under a mist, shines forth the innocent Tombs. Thus have I seen it from a casement high. As unsubstantial as a dream it grows. Is this Manhattan, virginal and shy, that in a cloud so rapturously glows? Ethereal, frail, and like an opening rose, I see my city with an enlightened eye.

II

A POLITICAL "BOSS"

HAS he no country? Is he of alien breed? Is this land not his home? Oh, exiled one! Stranger to his own kind, where does he run? How he has shamed us, for the world to read! Oh, carrion, prowling where this people bleed, Grown fat upon disaster, hide from the sun! A scornful nation asks, what has he done With the public trust, the honor, and the need. Not him with glorious hand will we indite, Patriot, Statesman, in the Hall of Fame, Nor will we let him flee into the night Of safe oblivion! But oh — that name For our sons' sons a moving hand shall write In scarlet letters on the walls of Shame.

III

SHAME ON THEE, O MANHATTAN

SHAME on thee, O Manhattan, whom I love! And shame on me that I have slept away So many years while thy feet went astray! O Thou—that should'st be white as any dove, Thou Scarlet Woman! Is there no voice to move — No hand to smite us? Even for this I pray — Some terrible scourging that we have let the day Darken around us while we saw thee rove. Last night I heard thee cry. Thy wandering feet Went bleeding by me. On thy ruined breast I saw thee nurse a feeding child of flame! Desolate, gorgeous, frantic along the street! Ah, how I blushed in the dark that through my rest I felt the burning garments of thy shame.

IV

THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE

THIS day into the fields my steps are led. I cannot heal me there! Row after row, Thousands of daisies radiantly blow. They have not brought from Heaven my daily bread! But they are like a prayer too often said. I have forgot their meaning, and I go From the cold rubric of their gold and snow, And the calm ritual, all uncomforted. I want the faces! faces! remote and pale, That surge along the city streets! The flood Of reckless ones, haggard and spent and frail, Excited, hungry! In this other mood 'T is not the words of the faith for which I ail, But to plunge in the fountain of its living blood.