THE PORT OF NEW YORK
Until the river bending to the bay, lifts
To the sight the electric hand and the illuminated face.
Now from the brooding ragged men who nurse
Their sores in the grass on the small public lawns
Or seek the river's wharfed and warehoused side,
Yesterday's papers about their feet-what dreams
Awaken seeing across the slow and darkened tide
The apparition where her tall face gleams?
Once was she haven, harbor and desire,
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Europe's better. Who knew the double eagle and the crested
claw,
North England's hunger, or the pogrom's fire,
Ireland's landlords, or the great floods, sought her shore.
Cunningly she lured them, cunningly-
Who came in the ship's depths and in the land's depths died–
Some mine exploding explained their liberty,
These warehouses shelter all that's left of pride.
But brightly to the stranger lifts her hand,
And ragged though it is, her myth survives.
White buildings still amaze the visitors who land,
And lies conceal what hungers wreck our lives.
Who sought her as the sickened seek the sun,
No longer on her towering falsehood blind our sight.
Now in the iron shadow of the piers-swept
By the North Atlantic-though tall she stand-
Brightly as ever-with myth and hand-her myth is done.
ALFRED HAYES
