"The City," by David Wolff

I stumbled across this poem when I read The Neon Wilderness by Nelson Algren for the first time, years ago. "The City" is included at the very beginning of the book.


Children of the cold sun and the broken horizon,
O secret faces, multitudes, eyes of inscrutible grief,
great breath of millions, in unknown crowds or alone,
rooms of dreams above the cement abyss, --and I,
who all night restive in the unsleeping rain,
awake and saw the window covered in tears.

noon, and dark twilight, and night with argon peaks,
matchless city, terrible... and all, all
I see are innocent; not walls, nor men
brutal, remote, stunned, querulous, weak, or cold
do crimes so massive, but the hideous fact
stands guilty; the usurpation of man over man.

- "The City" by David Wolff.


The line "rooms of dreams above the cement abyss" is stunning.