Manhattan

Out of the night you burn, Manhattan, In a vesture of gold - Span of innumerable arcs, Flaring and multiplying - Gold at the uttermost circles fading Into the tenderest hint of jade, Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, Robing the far-flung offices, Scintillant-storied, forking flame, Or soaring to luminous amethyst Over the steeples aureoled - Diaphanous gold, Veiling the Woolworth, argently Rising slender and stark Mellifluous-shrill as a vender's cry, And towers squatting graven and cold On the velvet bales of the dark, And the Singer's appraising Indolent idol's eye, And night like a purple cloth unrolled - Nebulous gold Throwing an ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, Wherein you burn... You of unknown voltage Whirling on your axis... Scrawling vermillion signatures Over the night's velvet hoarding... Insolent, towering spherical To apices ever shifting.