On this occasion, as he told it,

he himself, an inspector of police

and on the long night watch

duty officer for the whole borough,

sits alone, parked at a corner in his issue car;

the radio hisses like a tame snake;

messages tumble into the cabin

that is loud with the roar of the rain

along the roof

 

In a lull of the gale

he stares out at the oil-black crossroad

of alley and avenue, where beneath the streetlamps

bursts of rainbow iridescence

show where gasoline has leaked

from a late-travelling truck, and in this dark hour

Walsh thinks he can feel Manhattan

shift and stamp like a nervous horse

beneath his hand; the voices

vitiated by the miles, by the electron storm

that rages unending above this island,

are calling, calling: they are asking

for direction, for authority,

they say Boss, they say,

Boss, do we have probable cause,

can we toss this van,

and while he answers curtains of rain

race again down the brick-and-stone gullies

and shawls of cloud are drawn close

about the moon

 

Now I tell you that on this night

the man is no longer young in years

and he is old on the job,

but the all-entangling radio, the rain in sheets,

the moon, all that power of office

in its implacable pyramid,

the vast City burning with fairy light,

are working in his blood

like devils at a forge and at last

he takes out his wallet and looks at the tin,

and although into the microphone

he is still speaking the encoded ritual phrases

in the harsh accents of the Irish in exile,

saying to this one go and he goes,

to that one come and he comes,

he is looking at the shield in the leather

and within the curved white harp of his ribs

the damp air sings in his lungs, and the sodium lamps

seen through the streaming windshield

are mantled in golden haze