If I stay... projected, trembling against these bars filtering
     emaciated light...
will your eyes... that bore their lonely way through mine... stop as at a friendly gate... grow warm... and luminous? ... but I cannot stay... for the smell...  I know... how the days pass...  The prison squats with granite haunches on the young spring, battened under with its twisting green... and you... socket for every bolt piercing like a driven nail.  Eyes stare you through the bars... eyes blank as a graveled yard... and the silence shuffles heavy dice of feet in iron corridors... until the day... that has soiled herself in this black hole to caress the pale mask of your face... withdraws the last wizened ray to wash in the infinite her discolored hands.  Can you hear me, Sasha, in your surrounded darkness?

EMMA GOLDMAN

How should they appraise you, who walk up close to you as to a mountain, each proclaiming his own eyeful against the other’s eyeful.

Only time standing well off shall measure your circumference and height.

AN OLD WORKMAN

Warped... gland-dry... 
With spine askew
And body shrunken into half its space... 
Well-used as some cracked paving-stone... 
Bearing on his grimed and pitted front
A stamp... as of innumerable feet.

TO LARKIN

Is it you I see go by the window, Jim Larkin—­you not looking
     at me nor any one,
And your shadow swaying from East to West? 
Strange that you should be walking free—­you shut down without light,
And your legs tied up with a knot of iron.

One hundred million men and women go inevitably about their affairs,
In the somnolent way
Of men before a great drunkenness.... 
They do not see you go by their windows, Jim Larkin,
With your eyes bloody as the sunset
And your shadow gaunt upon the sky... 
You, and the like of you, that life
Is crushing for their frantic wines.

WIND RISING IN THE ALLEYS

Wind rising in the alleys
My spirit lifts in you like a banner streaming free of hot walls. 
You are full of unspent dreams.... 
You are laden with beginnings.... 
There is hope in you... not sweet... acrid as blood in the mouth. 
Come into my tossing dust
Scattering the peace of old deaths,
Wind rising in the alleys,
Carrying stuff of flame.