Old days on the West Side,
Old nights,
Summer nights when there was a faint Coney Island stir down electric-lit Eighth Avenue …
A moth-stir, flame, shadow, Bagdad …

I am the uptown youth in the slums …
I am a moth myself …

I go to certain dark street-corners under the steady silent explosion of pale blue arc-lights …
I am all one ache and yearning for beauty,
And beauty to me means the naked body of a woman …

And something more …
Some madness, some intoxication of passion, some wind of cool music,
Something of the breath of sandalwood burning and of Circe singing,
Or Arabian night of camel bells, laughing darkness, murder, adultery,
And drunken lovers on a divan …

To me, shut out of life by dreams,
It seems that even to touch a living warm body would shake me with madness …

I stand, timid, afraid … the prostitutes go by …
Their eyes, blue with electric light, seem alluring,
There is bewitchment of voluptuous curve, breath of perfume …
I send a dream upon them, they become star-like …

I nod to one … we are actually walking together …
I hardly look at her, I am flushed and weakened …
We turn down a mysterious dark side-street, we are in an entry,
The key turns, doors open, we are in a large dim room …
She is trying to sing, but only coughs …

There is a stale odour of cheap cologne and lard and soiled clothing …
A furniture and carpet smell, a smell of damp walls and broken plumbing …
A faint breath of reality touches and disturbs me …

I look at the woman … she is angular, tall and thin,
Her flushed cheeks hardly need the rouge, her bright eyes the belladonna,
She is a consumptive … my passion is repulsed and dies out of my body …

I become my teacher, the Christ-like Settlement Head,
I am blind with tears of pity …
I am all for saying, “Go, and sin no more” …

She sees I am disappointed and tries to excite me …
She grows pathetic: she tells me she needs the money …
I give her the money, and kiss her forehead, and tell her to take care of herself …

“Can't I do anything for you?” she asks …
“Nothing,” I say …

“Can't I even strip and stand naked before you?”

“No,” I say, “I only hope you'll be all right …”

I am satisfied: she sees a Christ in me:
She weeps, enfolds me, is full of sorrow …

I walk home, treading on air, yet a little abashed by the tragic realities,
I go to bed, chaste and spiritual …
And perhaps the next night I am moth again, flame, shadow, Bagdad,
One ache and yearning for beauty,
And nurse my illusions under the bluish arc-lamps …