Rock-a-by baby, woolly and brown’€… (There’s a shout at the door an’ a… Lil’ coon baby, mammy is down’€¦ Han’s that hold yuh are steady an’… Look piccaninny - such a gran’ bla…

Cool, inaccessible air Is floating in velvety blackness s… But no breath stirs the heat Leaning its ponderous bulk upon th… And most on Hester street…

Can you see me, Sasha? I can see you.... A tentacle of the vast dawn is res… that floats as though detached in a sultry and greenish vapor.

Snow wraiths circle us Like washers of the dead, Flapping their white wet cloths Impatiently About the grizzled head,

Drab discoloration Of faces, façades, pawn-shops, Second-hand clothing, Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch… Odors of rancid life’€¦

I would be a torch unto your hand, A lamp upon your forehead, Labor, In the wild darkness before the D… That I shall never see… We shall advance together, my Bel…

Warped... gland-dry... With spine askew And body shrunken into half its sp… Well-used as some cracked paving-s… Bearing on his grimed and pitted f…

Was there a wind? Tap... tap... Night pads upon the snow with moccasined feet... and it is still... so still... an eagle's feather might fall like a stone. Could there have been a storm...

He walked under the shadow of the… Where men are fed into the fires And walled apart… Unarmed and alone, He summoned his mates from the pit…

Life You have been good to me... You have not made yourself too dea… to juggle with.

Light! Innumerable ions of light, Kindling, irradiating, All to their foci tending… Light that jingles like anklet cha…

Bountiful Givers, I look along the years And see the flowers you threw’€¦ Anemones And sprigs of gray

We are old, Old as song. Before Rome was Or Cyrene. Mad nights knew us

The foreman's head slowly circling... White rims under yellow disks of eyes.... Gold hairs

Your love was like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty, so that little wry souls reflecting each other obliquely as in cracked mirrors’€¦ beheld in your luminous spirit their own r...