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“The Bridge: To Brooklyn Bridge” by Hart Crane

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How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty–

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
–Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,–
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan. Read more…

“The Bridge: The Harbor Dawn” by Hart Crane

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Insistently through sleep—a tide of voices—      
They meet you listening midway in your dream,     400 years and
The long, tired sounds, fog-insulated noises:     more . . . or is
Gongs in white surplices, beshrouded wails,     it from the
Far strum of fog horns . . .signals dispersed in veils     soundless shore
      of sleep that
And then a truck will lumber past the wharves     time
As winch engines begin throbbing on some deck;      
Or a drunken stevedore’s howl and thud below      
Comes echoing alley-upward through dim snow.      
       
And if they take your sleep away sometimes      
They give it back again. Soft sleeves of sound      
Attend the darkling harbor, the pillowed bay;      
Somewhere out there in blankness steam      
       
Spills into steam, and wanders, washed away      
— Flurried by keen fifings, eddied      
Among distant chiming buoys — adrift. The sky,      

Read more…