Empire State Tower

Muriel Rukeyser

The far lands melt to orange and to grey.
The city lies, quiet but for a rumor,
A single voice. People are guessed. We hazard
The world we know is there, below, unseen.
And in the street the many beautiful
Unstaring walk unwaiting the knives of doom,
In sleep, or death, or love-the beautiful people
Setting up parapets against space and time,
Like this one where small contact is forgotten.
Pitiable remove, that we should ask to go
Away from earth, from the nudge of other minds;
Clumsy abstraction, that human beings forego
For a short quiet the sight of their own kinds;
O strong unlove against our fellows here,
Never again set me so high, away
From action, pocketed in loneliness from fear,
And hurt, perhaps, but from the working-day.