Among a hundred windows shining  
      dully in the vast side
of greater-than-palace number such-and-such
      one burns
these several years, each night
      as if the room within were aflame.
Some fault in the glass
      combines with the precise distance and
my faulty eyes to produce
      this illusion; I know it—
yet still I’m ready to believe perhaps
      some lives
tremble and flare up there, four blocks away
      across the sooty roofs and
the dusk,
      with more intensity than what’s lived
behind the other windows,
      and the glowing of those brands of life
shows as seraphic or demonic flames
      visible only to weak and distant eyes.