The city screams —
 mad-dash-yellow taxicabs crash the stoplight’s glare
 to bring the bankers, workmen, soldiers, thieves who share
 the single shaking sidewalk rattling with the subway’s roar,
 each a willing captive of the island shore.

The city speaks —
 numberless voices of its denizens, each broken-backed,
 each lost to this sky-stretched metropolis, canyon-cracked,
 firing speech-bubble bullets back and forth and back again,
 snipers who find their targets every time in vain.

But from the detail to the whole, from fingertips to highest things,
 rising and rising above the sin, lifted on its bleach-blue wings —

The city sings.