Dawn in New York has
Four columns of mire
And a hurricane of black doves
Which splash in the putrid waters.

Dawn in New York groans
On enormous fire escapes
Searching between the eagles
For spikenards of drafted anguish.

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
Because morning and hope are impossible there.
And sometimes the furious swarming coins
Penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

Those who go out early know in their bones
There will be no paradise or love stripped of its petals;
They know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
In games without skill, in fruitless labors.

The light is buried beneath chains and noises,
Na impudent warning to rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
As if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.