Dawn

Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons splashing in the putrid waters.
Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth because tomorrow and hope are impossible there: 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 loves that bloom and die: they know they will be mired in numbers and laws, in mindless games, in fruitless labours.
The light is buried under chains and noises
in an impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.