Hart Crane, The Bridge: The Tunnel (selection)

A tugboat, wheezing wreaths of steam,

Lunged past, with one galvanic blare stove up the River.

I counted the echoes assembling, one after one,

Searching, thumbing the midnight on the piers.

Lights, coasting, left the oily tympanum of waters;

The blackness somewhere gouged glass on a sky.

And this thy harbor, O my City, I have driven under,

Tossed from the coil of ticking towers. . . . Tomorrow,

And to be. . . . Hereby the River that is East—

Here at the waters’ edge the hands drop memory;

Shadowless in that abyss they unaccounting lie.

How far away the star has pooled the sea—

Or shall the hands be drawn away, to die?

Kiss of our agony Thou gatherest,

O Hand of Fire

gatherest—