162 City poems

Down at the end of Baxter Street, where Five Points slum used to be, just north of Tombs, is a pocket park. On these summer days the green plane trees’ leaves linger heavy as a noon mist above the men playing mah jongg—more Chinese in the air than English.  The city’s composed of village greens; we rely on the Thai place on the corner: Tom Kha for a cold, jasmine tea for fever, squid for love, Duck Yum for loneliness.  Outside, the grove of heat, narrow streets where people wrestle rash and unseen angels; inside, the coolness of a glen and the wait staff in their pale blue collars offering ice water. Whatever you’ve done or undone, there’s a dish for you to take out or eat in: spice for courage, sweet for chagrin.

The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn. When evening quickens faintly in the street, Wakening the appetites of life in some And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript, I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he at the end of the street, And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript."

You might make a choice between what descends with these tiles lined before you, or arcing forward through a history that is constant against us. A bridge to block out the dawn. Or monoxide that passes like breath. My breath. I know all about what’s underground, and I keep my searches for the invisible there. In the park above, you’ve got your bike locked and the chain cut. The stubborn part doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to to start marching home, ugly block, block of shouting, block syrupy with flies. I would like to hear about it, but I am backed into an argument myself on a coil of cool fall breeze, backed through seasons into the past, home or near it, in the moment when I’m as right as I’ll ever be bled into I’ll be this right forever. There’s no out available for this character, just a decade producing the present, warm, and then warmer around him. It was as if I hadn’t seen the harbor, didn’t want to admit it by doing so now. Something like a pile of books falls over inside me or the room I’m in breaks off from the house, slides almost out of view. All things didn’t happen or did. You might’ve routed a highway so it crashes through the seventh floor of a skyscraper, and the moment for that passes by us still. You can live like a column of light pours over you, but that’s not all you’ll see.

Floodlights have flared on behind and above Where I sit in my public chair. The lawn that had gradually darkened has brightened. The library windows stare. I’m alone in a crowd—e pluribus plures. Far from a family I miss. I’d almost say I’m lonely, but lonely Is worse, I recall, than this. Loneliness is a genuine poverty. I’m like a man who is flush But forgot his wallet on the nightstand When he left for work in a rush, And now must go without food and coffee For a few hours more than he’d wish. That’s all. He still has a wallet. It’s bulging. It floats through his brain like a fish... Money for love: a terrible simile, But maybe it’s fitting here, A couple of blocks from Madison Avenue Where commodities are dear, Where all around me, rich skyscrapers Woo the impoverished sky, Having sent on their way the spent commuters Who stream, uncertain, by— And as for this whole splurge of a city, Isn’t money at its heart? But I’m blathering now. Forgetting my subject. What I meant to say at the start Is that I noticed a woman reading In a chair not far from mine. Silver-haired, calm, she stirred a hunger Hard for me to define, Perhaps because she doesn’t seem lonely. And what I loved was this: The way, when dusk had darkened her pages, As if expecting a kiss, She closed her eyes and threw her head back, Book open on her lap. Perhaps she was thinking about her story, Or the fall air, or a nap. I thought she’d leave me then for pastimes More suited to the dark. But she is on intimate terms, it seems, With the rhythms of Bryant Park, For that’s when the floodlights came on, slowly, Somewhere far above my need, And the grass grew green again, and the woman Reopened her eyes to read.

That’s right, said the cab driver, Turning the corner to the Round-a-bout way, Those stupid, fuckin’ beggars, You know the guys who Walk up to my cab With their hands extended And their little cups? You know their problem? You know what’s wrong with them? They ain’t got no brains. I mean, they don’t know nothin’ ’cause if they had brains They’d think of a way To find a job. You know what one of ’em told me once? He said what he did, Begging He said it was work. Begging Was work. And I told him Straight to his face: That ain’t work. You think that’s work? Let me tell you what work is: Work is something that you do That’s of value To someone else. Now you take me. It takes brains to do What I do. You know what I think? I think they ought to send All these beggars over To some other country, Any country, It don’t matter which, For 3, 4, years, Let them wander around Some other country, See how they like that. We ought to make a National program Sending them off To wander about Some other country For a few years, Let ’em beg over there, See how far it gets them. I mean, look at that guy You know, who was big In the sixties, That drug guy, Timothy Leary? Yeah, he went underground, Lived overseas. You know what? A few years abroad And he was ready to Come back On any terms. He didn’t care if They arrested him. He said The U.S. is better Than any country In the world. Send them over there For a few years. They’d be just like him. This is the greatest country In the whole world. Timothy Leary Was damn happy To get back here, And he’s doing fine. Look at me. I used to be like that. I used to live underground. I came back. I think all those beggars got a mental block. I think you should do something. I mean, you ought to like what you do, But you should do something. Something of use To the community. All those people, Those bums, Those scam artists, Those hustlers, Those drug addicts, Those welfare cheats, Those sponges. Other than that I don’t hold nothin’ Against no one. Hey, I picked you up.

I see you shuffle up Washington Street whenever I am driving much too fast: you, chub & bug-eyed, jaw like a loaf hands in your pockets, a smoke dangling slack from the slit of your pumpkin mouth, humped over like the eel-man or geek, the dummy paid to sweep out gutters, drown the cats. Where are you going now? Though someday you'll turn your gaze upon my shadow in this tinted glass I know for now you only look ahead at sidewalks cracked & paved with trash but what are you slouching toward—knee-locked, hippity, a hitch in your zombie walk, Bighead?

The evidence was in and it went to the contrary. The contrary wound around us rather like a river. The river reacted, spider-like, tangling up its legs with other wet parts we thought we knew, such as creeks and fjords and deltas and such. A beaver sits on the riverbank watching all of this unfold. He doesn’t know what a fjord is, and he doesn’t care for other waters, or even other beavers, or the merest hint of other business, so he removes this evidence. Then he builds a structure which for years he is rehabbing. Inside it is hollow and there is his nest. He is a dark little bastard, all the same. The water had a fine way of   being, now it is tortured by these nests and their vassal. Yet the river doesn’t overthrow the beaver. Quite the contrary. The river goes around polite as a snake. It argues a tiny bit at the edges of the lodge, where young beavers could be napping. You and I would let loose a flood of tears. Not the river. You and I would seep hotly into our darkest places. Not the river. It is a long way from home and has that on its mind, the day of rising, when the temples will all be cleansed and the whole unfathomable truth will out. According to the waters. According to their book.

Calmly we walk through this April’s day, Metropolitan poetry here and there, In the park sit pauper and rentier, The screaming children, the motor-car Fugitive about us, running away, Between the worker and the millionaire Number provides all distances, It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now, Many great dears are taken away, What will become of you and me (This is the school in which we learn ...) Besides the photo and the memory? (... that time is the fire in which we burn.) (This is the school in which we learn ...) What is the self amid this blaze? What am I now that I was then Which I shall suffer and act again, The theodicy I wrote in my high school days Restored all life from infancy, The children shouting are bright as they run (This is the school in which they learn ...) Ravished entirely in their passing play! (... that time is the fire in which they burn.) Avid its rush, that reeling blaze! Where is my father and Eleanor? Not where are they now, dead seven years, But what they were then? No more? No more? From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day, Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume Not where they are now (where are they now?) But what they were then, both beautiful; Each minute bursts in the burning room, The great globe reels in the solar fire, Spinning the trivial and unique away. (How all things flash! How all things flare!) What am I now that I was then? May memory restore again and again The smallest color of the smallest day: Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.

Sprinting across the freeway just ahead of them having set his left foot down directly onto the pavement from the ledge of the cement divide and edging his other leg forward deliberately—caught the way sports pages show an athlete with muscles condensed in the effort of crossing through a particular space—and then she sees the cars coming towards him giving off that early morning shine across their hoods almost colorless but precipitous in the four-lane parallel rush of metal and cannot tell if any driver straining into the distance further ahead has seen him or possibly has caught that glint off the long black flashlight he appears to carry with its up-beam turned on full and faintly visible due to the angle of early sun falling over the midwestern plains fanning out in every direction away from the sudden view of the airport hub’s acclaimed architectural design. She sees the brief alignment of his body methodically finding its way across the freeway lanes blue baseball cap fit snugly over his head to just above the hairline where now dusky skin of his neck breaks into the picture.He’s made it halfway, she thinks, but she can’t stop the cars rushing towards him even as he scans with concentration the worn lanes for the thing he’s lost as if he’s walking through the dark and shining his flashlight wherever the object might have landed, his right knee   still lifting purposefully upward and forward. — for C.W.

Something has to give. We stand above it all. Below, the buildings' tall but tiny narrative. The water's always near, you say. And so are you, for now. It has to do. There's little left to fear. A wind so cold, one might forget that winter's gone. The city lights are on for us, to us, tonight.