How does E. L. Doctorow use imagery in City of God?

Imagery:

It is a rather frightening idea, in fact, that if I moved at the speed of light, I could get no confirmation of my existence from an objective source of reflected light such as a mirror. I would be like a ghost in the universe, materially unverifiable in the stream of time.

The experience of experience is untransmittable, / The children shrug what’s done is done, / and history instructs them finally / not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, / As some thirty million were in World War Two, / each a packet of terminal agony / for at least one unendurable moment / and all the loving structures of consciousness / satanically compressed as the world / came to an end.