They are like sensitive surfaces that have been laid in
the midst of the New Yorks; and record not only the clangors, but all
the violent forms of the city, the beat of the frenetic activity, the
intersecting planes of light, the masses of the masonry with the tiny,
dwarf-like creatures running in and out, the electric signs staining the
inky nightclouds. They give again the alarum of dawn breaking upon the
crowded, swarming cells; seven o'clock steam whistles on a winter morn;
pitiless light filtering over hurrying black droves of humanity;
thousands of shivering workers blackening Fourteenth Street. They
picture the very Niebelheim, the hordes of slaves herded by giants of
their own creation, the commands and cries of power in the bells,
whistles, signals. The grinding and shrieking of loaded trains in the
tubes, cranes laboring in the port, rotary engines drilling, turbines
churning are woven through them. Blankets of fog descend upon the river;
menacing shapes loom through it; rays of red light seek to cut the mist.
Flowers that are gray and black blossom on the ledges of tenement
windows giving on bare walls. And human souls and songs that are gray
and black like them bloom in the blind air, open their velvet petals,
their lustrous, soft corollas, from crannies and windows into this
metal, this dun, this unceasing roar.
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