A aurora de Nova Iorque tem
Quatro colunas de lodo
E um furacão de pombas
Que explode as águas podres.
A aurora de Nova lorque geme
Nas vastas escadarias
A buscar entre as arestas
Angústias indefinidas.
A aurora chega e ninguém em sua boca a recebe
Porque ali a esperança nem a manhã são possíveis.
E as moedas, como enxames,
Devoram recém-nascidos.
Os que primeiro se erguem, em seus ossos adivinham:
Não haverá paraíso nem amores desfolhados;
Só números, leis e o lodo
De tanto esforço baldado.
A barulheira das ruas sepulta a luz na cidade
E as pessoas pelos bairros vão cambaleando insones
Como se houvessem saído
De um naufrágio de sangue.
****
DAWN
Dawn in New York has
Four columns of mire
And a hurricane of black doves
Which splash in the putrid waters.
Dawn in New York groans
On enormous fire escapes
Searching between the eagles
For spikenards of drafted anguish.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
Because morning and hope are impossible there.
And sometimes the furious swarming coins
Penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.
Those who go out early know in their bones
There will be no paradise or love stripped of its petals;
They know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
In games without skill, in fruitless labors.
The light is buried beneath chains and noises,
Na impudent warning to rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
As if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.
