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.

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge, born Rose Emily Ridge, was an Irish-American anarchist poet and influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications. Best known for her long poems and involvement in various social movements, Ridge's work addressed issues such as oppression and social justice. She published her first book of poems, "The Ghetto and Other Poems," in 1918, which gained her considerable acclaim. Ridge's poetry often focused on the lives of immigrants and the working class.

Lola Ridge

The Everlasting Return

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Scandal

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Broadway

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

Spring

Lola Ridge, Simple Poetry

English

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Broadway

Light!
Innumerable ions of light,
Kindling, irradiating,
All to their foci tending...

Light that jingles like anklet chains
On bevies of little lithe twinkling feet,
Or clingles in myriad vibrations
Like trillions of porcelain
Vases shattering...

Light over the laminae of roofs,
Diffusing in shimmering nebulae
About the night's boundaries,
Or billowing in pearly foam
Submerging the low-lying stars...

Light for the feast prolonged -
Captive light in the goblets quivering...
Sparks evanescent
Struck of meeting looks -
Fringed eyelids leashing
Sheathed and leaping lights...
Infinite bubbles of light
Bursting, reforming...
Silvery filings of light
Incessantly falling...
Scintillant, sided dust of light

Lola Ridge

Promenade

        Undulant rustlings,
        Of oncoming silk,
        Rhythmic, incessant,
        Like the motion of leaves...
        Fragments of color
        In glowing surprises...
        Pink inuendoes
        Hooded in gray
        Like buds in a cobweb
        Pearled at dawn...
        Glimpses of green
        And blurs of gold
        And delicate mauves
        That snatch at youth...
        And bodies all rosily
        Fleshed for the airing,
        In warm velvety surges
        Passing imperious, slow...

Women drift into the limousines
That shut like silken caskets
On gems half weary of their glittering...
Lamps open like pale moon flowers...
Arcs are radiant opals
Strewn along the dusk...
No common lig...

Lola Ridge

Flotsam

Crass rays streaming from the vestibules;
Cafes glittering like jeweled teeth;
High-flung signs
Blinking yellow phosphorescent eyes;
Girls in black
Circling monotonously
About the orange lights...

Nothing to guess at...
Save the darkness above
Crouching like a great cat.

In the dim-lit square,
Where dishevelled trees
Tustle with the wind - the wind like a scythe
Mowing their last leaves -
Arcs shimmering through a greenish haze -
Pale oval arcs
Like ailing virgins,
Each out of a halo circumscribed,
Pallidly staring...

Figures drift upon the benches
With no more rustle than a dropped leaf settling -
Slovenly figures like untied parcels,
And papers wrapped about their knees
Huddled one to the other,
Cring...

Lola Ridge

To The Others

I see you, refulgent ones,
Burning so steadily
Like big white arc lights...
There are so many of you.
I like to watch you weaving -
Altogether and with precision
Each his ray -
Your tracery of light,
Making a shining way about America.

I note your infinite reactions -
In glassware
And sequin
And puddles
And bits of jet -
And here and there a diamond...

But you do not yet see me,
Who am a torch blown along the wind,
Flickering to a spark
But never out.

Lola Ridge

Frank Little At Calvary

I

He walked under the shadow of the Hill
Where men are fed into the fires
And walled apart...
Unarmed and alone,
He summoned his mates from the pit's mouth
Where tools rested on the floors
And great cranes swung
Unemptied, on the iron girders.
And they, who were the Lords of the Hill,
Were seized with a great fear,
When they heard out of the silence of wheels
The answer ringing
In endless reverberations
Under the mountain...

So they covered up their faces
And crept upon him as he slept...
Out of eye-holes in black cloth
They looked upon him who had flung
Between them and their ancient prey
The frail barricade of his life...
And when night - that has connived at so much -
Was heavy with the unborn day,
They haled h...

Lola Ridge

London Voluntaries - To Charles Whibley - III - Scherzando

Down through the ancient Strand
The spirit of October, mild and boon
And sauntering, takes his way
This golden end of afternoon,
As though the corn stood yellow in all the land,
And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.

Lo! the round sun, half-down the western slope -
Seen as along an unglazed telescope -
Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:
Gifting the long, lean, lanky street
And its abounding confluences of being
With aspects generous and bland;
Making a thousand harnesses to shine
As with new ore from some enchanted mine,
And every horse's coat so full of sheen
He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean,
And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;
And every jeweller within the pale
Offers a real Arabian Night for sale;...

William Ernest Henley