162 City poems

1 The lean hands of wagon men put out pointing fingers here, picked this crossway, put it on a map, set up their sawbucks, fixed their shotguns, found a hitching place for the pony express, made a hitching place for the iron horse, the one-eyed horse with the fire-spit head, found a homelike spot and said, “Make a home,” saw this corner with a mesh of rails, shuttling people, shunting cars, shaping the junk of the earth to a new city. The hands of men took hold and tugged And the breaths of men went into the junk And the junk stood up into skyscrapers and asked: Who am I? Am I a city? And if I am what is my name? And once while the time whistles blew and blew again The men answered: Long ago we gave you a name, Long ago we laughed and said: You? Your name is Chicago. Early the red men gave a name to the river, the place of the skunk, the river of the wild onion smell, Shee-caw-go. Out of the payday songs of steam shovels, Out of the wages of structural iron rivets, The living lighted skyscrapers tell it now as a name, Tell it across miles of sea blue water, gray blue land: I am Chicago, I am a name given out by the breaths of working men, laughing men, a child, a belonging. So between the Great Lakes, The Grand De Tour, and the Grand Prairie, The living lighted skyscrapers stand, Spotting the blue dusk with checkers of yellow, streamers of smoke and silver, parallelograms of night-gray watchmen, Singing a soft moaning song: I am a child, a belonging. 6 The wheelbarrows grin, the shovels and the mortar hoist an exploit. The stone shanks of the Monadnock, the Transportation, the People’s Gas Building, stand up and scrape at the sky. The wheelbarrows sing, the bevels and the blueprints whisper. The library building named after Crerar, naked as a stock farm silo, light as a single eagle feather, stripped like an airplane propeller, takes a path up. Two cool new rivets says, “Maybe it is morning.” “God knows.” Put the city up; tear the city down; put it up again; let us find a city. Let us remember the little violet-eyed man who gave all, praying, “Dig and dream, dream and hammer, till your city comes.” Every day the people sleep and the city dies; every day the people shake loose, awake and build the city again. The city is a tool chest opened every day, a time clock punched every morning, a shop door, bunkers and overalls counting every day. The city is a balloon and a bubble plaything shot to the sky every evening, whistled in a ragtime jig down the sunset. The city is made, forgotten, and made again, trucks hauling it away haul it back steered by drivers whistling ragtime against the sunsets. Every day the people get up and carry the city, carry the bunkers and balloons of the city, lift it and put it down. “I will die as many times as you make me over again, says the city to the people, I am the woman, the home, the family, I get breakfast and pay the rent; I telephone the doctor, the milkman, the undertaker; I fix the streets for your first and your last ride— Come clean with me, come clean or dirty, I am stone and steel of your sleeping numbers; I remember all you forget. I will die as many times as you make me over again.” Under the foundations, Over the roofs, The bevels and the blueprints talk it over. The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders. The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles. The winkers of the morning stars count out cities And forget the numbers.

A star screen shimmers under the moon over the urban center flashing on it red and green I’ll have a suspension, mustard, topicality, glue Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty Whipped gouache just about covers the situation In the Musée Unless there’s a fallen nest on display empty of an egg once belonging to a song bird, species unknown, which had sung See style, see working late, see mismatched socks, see polyphony It is the fate of logic infinitely to undo closure but that’s just to say that it’s the fate of logic infinitely to be logical So like a man goes into a shop and there’s like this other man in there whom he thinks he recognizes and he says like do I know you The fallen grass in winter sprawls its spring Regulations state that the pier can accommodate no more than one troupe of acrobats, thirty fishermen, or fifty tourists Yo The child never gives up her secret, which—don’t tell—is that she has a secret, and her secret has a penis We will lose another day from the inner picture—days are not ineradicable there What is it that one is autobiographical about

Snarls, bread trucks, yeast breathing inside huddled bags, and sleepers completing lives behind their gray windows. A whistle on the phonewires, feathers, twitches, whistling down to the hot loaves. Reeds everywhere, pulse, flesh, flutes, and wakened sighs. An answer. Radio news and breathers behind our windows, birds’ new voices changing, changed, to the unforgiving hunger screech of immigrants.

For David Freedman I read somewhere that if pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible, the whole city would stop, it would stop. Cars would back up to Rhode Island, an epic gridlock not even a cat could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved the unprecedented gall of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm. They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical as any day laborers. They knew what was coming, the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant it burst. A downpour like a fire hose. For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled, paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato. And it was my pleasure to witness a not insignificant miracle: in one instant every black umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera, the sails of some vast armada. And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress to accompany the piano movers. each holding what might have once been lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled under the corner awning, in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette around. The city feeds on beauty, starves for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight, to my deserted block with its famously high subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon opened its mouth to drink from on high ...

The palms are psalms. The nail salons, manicured lawns. This is some phase. The park has been razed. I miss the hip, hours at a clip, their dopey glazed Dolores haze (sorry). I worry about basic stuff: my graying scruff, Ambien addiction. Eviction ... — But there’s another story: this site was once a cemetery. In 1888, the late were stirred, disinterred, carted somewhere calm, a nothing place called Colma. By then the dead prohibited in city light. They thought this was all right: the dead have nothing to lose; the dead were Jews. Hills of Eternity, Home of Peace: the dead were put in their place.

Through the Victorians spinning a wool of music the gang in the breeze Boys and girls headed toward the park No longer in my view Wondering now what they doing How they divide Hold hands Lay on benches Breathe Dolores park green waving mounds where downtown looks like you could stretch and scratch it You can see the water smaller the other side connected with the bay bridge from this angle Appears as a cowboy rope Lasso Back to the park the across the street is windows Suggest Eyes which could have been looking at savannahs / stretches had it not been for transportation The city settling Up from planks and kerosense lamps Rugged Small vocabularies full of passion Found a gold sliver on the way to my fruits Raise the air fair Let the news out Rush like Hawaiian beer The big radio of the teenagers comes again looking through the curtain Look them wasted Clothes wrinkled Eyes fresh like just arrived mushrooms they move to the interior of the Mission where they hang out / generations on the streets

Towery city and branchy between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark charmèd, rook racked, river-rounded; The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did Once encounter in, here coped & poisèd powers; Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded Rural, rural keeping — folk, flocks, and flowers. Yet ah! this air I gather and I release He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace; Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece; Who fired France for Mary without spot.

As I stood upon London Bridge and viewed the mighty throng Of thousands of people in cabs and ’busses rapidly whirling along, All furiously driving to and fro, Up one street and down another as quick as they could go: Then I was struck with the discordant sound of human voices there, Which seemed to me like wild geese cackling in the air: And the river Thames is a most beautiful sight, To see the steamers sailing upon it by day and by night. And the Tower of London is most gloomy to behold, And the crown of England lies there, begemmed with precious stones and gold; King Henry the Sixth was murdered there by the Duke of Glo’ster, And when he killed him with his sword he called him an impostor. St. Paul’s Cathedral is the finest building that ever I did see, There’s no building can surpass it in the city of Dundee, Because it’s magnificent to behold, With its beautiful dome and spire glottering like gold. And as for Nelson’s Monument that stands in Trafalgar Square, It is a most stately monument I most solemnly declare, And towering defiantly very high, Which arrests strangers’ attention while passing by. Then there’s two beautiful water-fountains spouting up very high, Where the weary traveller can drink when he feels dry; And at the foot of the monument there’s three bronze lions in grand array, Enough to make the stranger’s heart throb with dismay. Then there’s Mr Spurgeon, a great preacher, which no one dare gainsay, I went to hear him preach on the Sabbath-day, And he made my heart feel light and gay, When I heard him preach and pray. And the Tabernacle was crowded from ceiling to floor, And many were standing outside the door; He is an eloquent preacher I honestly declare, And I was struck with admiration as on him I did stare. Then there’s Petticoat Lane I venture to say, It’s a wonderful place on the Sabbath-day; There wearing-apparel can be bought to suit the young or old, For the ready cash, silver, coppers, or gold. Oh! mighty city of London! you are wonderful to see, And thy beauties no doubt fill the tourist’s heart with glee; But during my short stay, and while wandering there, Mr Spurgeon was the only man I heard speaking proper English I do declare.

At the top of a hill each morning, I wait for the bus by the donut store. Its pink sign looks hot, curls, like a rope, a stem to a brain. You turn toward a jade at the height of your neighborhood, stop at a light in its gut. The sun starts to seep up, reaching all grasses and grooves of the city. A white bus with black windows passes. A few minutes later, the city bus arrives like a room. It crawls warm and dull to the west edge, breathing its heat, a few baby hands warming wide glass. The billboard at my stop displays a large number to call. A man walks his sniffing dog below it, sharp legs brushing wild onion. At the base of the hill, I enter my code, push the gray gate open, allow the worn loop of my bag down my arm, walk to my station. I drop the metal end of a hose into a bucket, turn the tough faucet. Traveling after the sound, the cold rushes out full force from the rubber, breaking into itself, interrupting and filling the round plastic space. Hungry, I pick up the water.

I go to the corner liquor store for a bottle of water, middle of a hectic day, must get out of the office, stop making decisions, quit obsessing does my blue skirt clash with my hot pink flats; should I get my mother a caregiver or just put her in a home, and I pull open the glass refrigerator door, am confronted by brands—Arrowhead, Glitter Geyser, Deer Park, spring, summer, winter water, and clearly the bosses of bottled water: Real Water and Smart Water—how different will they taste? If I drink Smart Water will I raise my IQ but be less authentic? If I choose Real Water will I no longer deny the truth, but will I attract confused, needy people who’ll take advantage of my realness by dumping their problems on me, and will I be too stupid to help them sort through their murky dilemmas? I take no chances, buy them both, sparkling smart, purified real, drain both bottles, look around to see is anyone watching? I’m now brilliantly hydrated. Both real and smart my insides bubble with compassion and intelligence as I walk the streets with a new swagger, knowing the world is mine.