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.