Poetry for January 1955

2 0 0
                                    

Along East River and the Bronx,
the young men were singing, baring their waists,
with the wheel and the leather, the hammer, the oil.
Ninety thousand miners whittled silver from the rocks
and the boys traced ladders and perspectives.

But nobody slept
or wished to be: river;
none loved the big leaves
or the beach's blue tongue.

Along East River and Queensborough,
the young men were grappling with Industry.
The Jews sold the faun of the river
circumcision's rosette;
and the sky, over bridges and rooftops,
emptied its buffalo herds to the push of the wind.

By: Walt Whitman

PoemsWhere stories live. Discover now