Days of the dead soul,
Days when we had a corner in the sky on Washington Heights,
An eagle-eyrie in the north-west of the city,
And from the sixth-floor windows we saw the whole of the city
A sweeping plateau of roofs that rose in the south in towers …
Here one might see the pageant of light,
And the city taking its sky-baths;
Here one might muse on the separate souls that lived out their wishes under the roofs,
The tides of the millions under the skies …
One might look down like a sad god on the human race
Which had come from its natural home of meadow and mountain
To intensify passion and desire in a few acres of stone …
Which had fled from the gods and the devils and the animals and the seasons
Staking all hope for self in one another …
Which was used up in a colossus of machinery of which the great city was covering shell,
Which had little joy of it all, little good …

And unseen, above them, the seasons, the gods, the heavens went on in their courses …
One might behold vast destinies woven invisibly above the metropolis;
One might turn out the electric light that bound one in the room
And startling through the window came the blue-green tinge of a great moon,
And glancing out, one saw a string of lamps down the avenue,
And here and there a window-light, and shadowy hulks of houses,
And all the heavens sparkled with stars …
The multitude-fever folded in silence …

Or at dawn, holding my little boy in my arm,
We might see sunrise like a piece of music,
One note of colour after another rising to a triumphant climax—
A rosy flush along a scarf of grey spreading fanwise in the heavens,
And against the soft and deepening colour
A bird flying straight from the East,
And all the city lost in dim grey,
And chimneys smoking, a flight of ghosts …
In that gradual miracle my boy held up a hand and crowed,
Crowed like any astounded cock in a barnyard,
And looking, I saw sunrise in his face,
And pure joy and intuition of life …
And then I knew …

I saw it all: I could set it down in words on paper …
But I could not feel it, I could not share the wonder,
I could not break the bread of the body of the world
And eat of it …
I saw the bread, but my mouth was sealed …