Seven nations stood with their hands on the jaws of death.

And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love.An iron picket fence … and streaming thousands along Broadway sidewalks … straw hats, faces, legs … a singing, talking, hustling river … down the great street…

Where fog trails and mist creeps,The whistle of a boatCalls and cries unendingly,Like some lost childIn tears and troubleHunting the harbor’s breastAnd the harbor’s eyes.

And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean:It is something.To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands,Clean for the day book today and the record of the after days,Held at your side proud, satisfied to the last, and ready,So to have clean hands:God, it is…

Here is a strong young man who killed.There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped the bullets of an automatic pistol into another man, a fellow citizen.Therefore, the prosecuting attorneys, fellow citizens, and a jury of his peers, also…

In the low blue lustreOf the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.A long brown bar at the dip of the skyPuts an arm of sand in the span of salt.The lucid and endless wrinklesDraw in, lapse and withdraw.Wavelets crumble and white spent bubblesWash on the floor of the beach.Rocking on the crestIn the low blue…

Of “mutton chops,” “galways,” “feather dusters.”Metaphors such as these sprang from their lips while other street criesSprang from sparrows finding scattered oats among interstices of the curb.Ah-hah these metaphors—and Ah-hah these boys—among the police they were knownAs the Dirty Dozen and their names took the front pages of newspapersAnd two of them croaked on the…