162 City poems

for Baroness G. de Hueck Across the cages of the keyless aviaries, The lines and wires, the gallows of the broken kites, Crucify, against the fearful light, The ragged dresses of the little children. Soon, in the sterile jungles of the waterpipes and ladders, The bleeding sun, a bird of prey, will terrify the poor, These will forget the unbelievable moon. But in the cells of whiter buildings, Where the glass dawn is brighter than the knives of surgeons, Paler than alcohol or ether, shinier than money, The white men’s wives, like Pilate’s, Cry in the peril of their frozen dreams: “Daylight has driven iron spikes, Into the flesh of Jesus’ hands and feet: Four flowers of blood have nailed Him to the walls of Harlem.” Along the white halls of the clinics and the hospitals Pilate evaporates with a cry: They have cut down two hundred Judases, Hanged by the neck in the opera houses and the museum. Across the cages of the keyless aviaries, The lines and wires, the gallows of the broken kites, Crucify, against the fearful light, The ragged dresses of the little children.

I am leading a quiet life in Mike’s Place every day watching the champs of the Dante Billiard Parlor and the French pinball addicts. I am leading a quiet life on lower East Broadway. I am an American. I was an American boy. I read the American Boy Magazine and became a boy scout in the suburbs. I thought I was Tom Sawyer catching crayfish in the Bronx River and imagining the Mississippi. I had a baseball mit and an American Flyer bike. I delivered the Woman’s Home Companion at five in the afternoon or the Herald Trib at five in the morning. I still can hear the paper thump on lost porches. I had an unhappy childhood. I saw Lindbergh land. I looked homeward and saw no angel. I got caught stealing pencils from the Five and Ten Cent Store the same month I made Eagle Scout. I chopped trees for the CCC and sat on them. I landed in Normandy in a rowboat that turned over. I have seen the educated armies on the beach at Dover. I have seen Egyptian pilots in purple clouds shopkeepers rolling up their blinds at midday potato salad and dandelions at anarchist picnics. I am reading ‘Lorna Doone’ and a life of John Most terror of the industrialist a bomb on his desk at all times. I have seen the garbagemen parade in the Columbus Day Parade behind the glib farting trumpeters. I have not been out to the Cloisters in a long time nor to the Tuileries but I still keep thinking of going. I have seen the garbagemen parade when it was snowing. I have eaten hotdogs in ballparks. I have heard the Gettysburg Address and the Ginsberg Address. I like it here and I won’t go back where I came from. I too have ridden boxcars boxcars boxcars. I have travelled among unknown men. I have been in Asia with Noah in the Ark. I was in India when Rome was built. I have been in the Manger with an Ass. I have seen the Eternal Distributor from a White Hill in South San Francisco and the Laughing Woman at Loona Park outside the Fun House in a great rainstorm still laughing. I have heard the sound of revelry by night. I have wandered lonely as a crowd. I am leading a quiet life outside of Mike’s Place every day watching the world walk by in its curious shoes. I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn. That Bridge was too much for me. I have engaged in silence exile and cunning. I flew too near the sun and my wax wings fell off. I am looking for my Old Man whom I never knew. I am looking for the Lost Leader with whom I flew. Young men should be explorers. Home is where one starts from. But Mother never told me there’d be scenes like this. Womb-weary I rest I have travelled. I have seen goof city. I have seen the mass mess. I have heard Kid Ory cry. I have heard a trombone preach. I have heard Debussy strained thru a sheet. I have slept in a hundred islands where books were trees. I have heard the birds that sound like bells. I have worn grey flannel trousers and walked upon the beach of hell. I have dwelt in a hundred cities where trees were books. What subways what taxis what cafes! What women with blind breasts limbs lost among skyscrapers! I have seen the statues of heroes at carrefours. Danton weeping at a metro entrance Columbus in Barcelona pointing Westward up the Ramblas toward the American Express Lincoln in his stony chair And a great Stone Face in North Dakota. I know that Columbus did not invent America. I have heard a hundred housebroken Ezra Pounds. They should all be freed. It is long since I was a herdsman. I am leading a quiet life in Mike’s Place every day reading the Classified columns. I have read the Reader’s Digest from cover to cover and noted the close identification of the United States and the Promised Land where every coin is marked In God We Trust but the dollar bills do not have it being gods unto themselves. I read the Want Ads daily looking for a stone a leaf an unfound door. I hear America singing in the Yellow Pages. One could never tell the soul has its rages. I read the papers every day and hear humanity amiss in the sad plethora of print. I see where Walden Pond has been drained to make an amusement park. I see they’re making Melville eat his whale. I see another war is coming but I won’t be there to fight it. I have read the writing on the outhouse wall. I helped Kilroy write it. I marched up Fifth Avenue blowing on a bugle in a tight platoon but hurried back to the Casbah looking for my dog. I see a similarity between dogs and me. Dogs are the true observers walking up and down the world thru the Molloy country. I have walked down alleys too narrow for Chryslers. I have seen a hundred horseless milkwagons in a vacant lot in Astoria. Ben Shahn never painted them but they’re there askew in Astoria. I have heard the junkman’s obbligato. I have ridden superhighways and believed the billboard’s promises Crossed the Jersey Flats and seen the Cities of the Plain And wallowed in the wilds of Westchester with its roving bands of natives in stationwagons. I have seen them. I am the man. I was there. I suffered somewhat. I am an American. I have a passport. I did not suffer in public. And I’m too young to die. I am a selfmade man. And I have plans for the future. I am in line for a top job. I may be moving on to Detroit. I am only temporarily a tie salesman. I am a good Joe. I am an open book to my boss. I am a complete mystery to my closest friends. I am leading a quiet life in Mike’s Place every day contemplating my navel. I am a part of the body’s long madness. I have wandered in various nightwoods. I have leaned in drunken doorways. I have written wild stories without punctuation. I am the man. I was there. I suffered somewhat. I have sat in an uneasy chair. I am a tear of the sun. I am a hill where poets run. I invented the alphabet after watching the flight of cranes who made letters with their legs. I am a lake upon a plain. I am a word in a tree. I am a hill of poetry. I am a raid on the inarticulate. I have dreamt that all my teeth fell out but my tongue lived to tell the tale. For I am a still of poetry. I am a bank of song. I am a playerpiano in an abandoned casino on a seaside esplanade in a dense fog still playing. I see a similarity between the Laughing Woman and myself. I have heard the sound of summer in the rain. I have seen girls on boardwalks have complicated sensations. I understand their hesitations. I am a gatherer of fruit. I have seen how kisses cause euphoria. I have risked enchantment. I have seen the Virgin in an appletree at Chartres And Saint Joan burn at the Bella Union. I have seen giraffes in junglejims their necks like love wound around the iron circumstances of the world. I have seen the Venus Aphrodite armless in her drafty corridor. I have heard a siren sing at One Fifth Avenue. I have seen the White Goddess dancing in the Rue des Beaux Arts on the Fourteenth of July and the Beautiful Dame Without Mercy picking her nose in Chumley’s. She did not speak English. She had yellow hair and a hoarse voice I am leading a quiet life in Mike’s Place every day watching the pocket pool players making the minestrone scene wolfing the macaronis and I have read somewhere the Meaning of Existence yet have forgotten just exactly where. But I am the man And I’ll be there. And I may cause the lips of those who are asleep to speak. And I may make my notebooks into sheaves of grass. And I may write my own eponymous epitaph instructing the horsemen to pass.

I It is not to be bought for a penny in the candy store, nor picked from the bushes in the park. It may be found, perhaps, in the ashes on the distant lots, among the rusting cans and Jimpson weeds. If you wish to eat fish freely, cucumbers and melons, you should have stayed in Egypt. II I am alone— and glad to be alone; I do not like people who walk about so late; who walk slowly after midnight through the leaves fallen on the sidewalks. I do not like my own face in the little mirrors of the slot-machines before the closed stores. III Walking along the highway, I smell the yellow flowers of a shrub, watch the starlings on a lawn, perhaps— but why are all these speeding away in automobiles, where are they off to in such a hurry? They must be going to hear wise men and to look at beautiful women, and I am just a fool to be loitering here alone. IV I like the sound of the street— but I, apart and alone, beside an open window and behind a closed door. V Winter is here indeed; the leaves have long been swept from the winding walks; trees and ground are brown— all is in order. Only the lamps now flourish in the park. We walk about and talk; but the troubles of the unsuccessful middle-aged are so uninteresting! VI Now it is cold: where the snow was melting the walk crackles with black ice beneath my careful steps; and the snow is old and pitted, here grey with ashes and there yellow with sand. The walks lie in the cold shadow of houses; pigeons and sparrows are in a hollow for cold, out of the wind; but here, where the sunshine pours through a narrow street upon a little tree, black and naked of every leaf, the sparrows are in the sun, thick upon the twigs. Those who in their lives braved the anger of their fellows, bronze statues now, with outstretched arm or sword brave only the weather. I find myself talking aloud as I walk; that is bad. Only Don Juan would believe I am in conversation with the snow-covered statues; only St. Francis that I am talking to the sparrows in the naked bushes, to the pigeons in the snow. VII The ropes in the wind slapping the flag-pole (the flag has been hauled down); behind the bare tree-tops the lights of an aeroplane moving away slowly. A star or two shining between factory chimneys; the street dark and still because the street-lamp has been broken and it is cold and late. VIII Bright upon the table for your birthday, the burning candles will dissolve in rays and lumps of wax. Unlike a skull, they say politely, This is you! IX I am afraid because of the foolishness I have spoken. I must diet on silence; strengthen myself with quiet. Where is the wisdom with which I may be medicined? I will walk by myself and cure myself in the sunshine and the wind. X I do not believe that David killed Goliath. It must have been— you will find the name in the list of David’s captains. But, whoever it was, he was no fool when he took off the helmet and put down the sword and the spear and the shield and said, The weapons you have given me are good, but they are not mine: I will fight in my own way with a couple of pebbles and a sling. XI “Shall I go there?” “As you like— it will not matter; you are not at all important.” The words stuck to me like burrs. The path was hidden under the fallen leaves; and here and there the stream was choked. Where it forced a way the ripples flashed a second. She spoke unkindly but it was the truth: I shared the sunshine like a leaf, a ripple; thinking of this, sunned myself and, for the moment, was content. XII There is nobody in the street of those who crowded about David to watch me as I dance before the Lord: alone in my unimportance to do as I like. XIII Your angry words—each false name sinks into me, and is added to the heap beneath. I am still the same: they are no part of me, which I keep; but the way I go, and over which I flow. XIV The Bridge In a cloud bones of steel. XV God and Messenger This pavement barren as the mountain on which God spoke to Moses— suddenly in the street shining against my legs the bumper of a motor car. XVI A beggar stretches out his hand to touch a fur collar, and strokes it unseen, stealing its warmth for his finger tips. XVII The elevator man, working long hours for little—whose work is dull and trivial— must also greet each passenger pleasantly: to be so heroic he wears a uniform. XVIII This subway station with its electric lights, pillars of steel, arches of cement, and trains— quite an improvement on the caves of the cave-men; but, look! on this wall a primitive drawing. XIX Subway People moving, people standing still, crowds and more crowds; a thousand and ten thousand iron girders as pillars; escape! But how, shut up in the moving train? And upstairs, in the street, the sun is shining as it shines in June. XX Poet with Whiskey Bottle and Sailor There is anguish there, certainly, and a commotion in the next room; shouts of words and phrases that do not make sentences and sentences that do not make sense. I open the door: ah, the hallway is crowded— descendants of the three wise men, now male and female, come again to worship in a stable. XXI The white cat on the lawn, lying in the sun against the hedge, lovely to look at— but this stout gentleman, who needs a shave badly, leaning in an arbor hung with purple grapes, purple grapes all about him, is unpleasant. Am I becoming misanthropic? An atheist? Why, this might be the god Bacchus! XXII The bearded rag-picker seated among heaps of rags in a basement sings: It was born that way; that is the way it was born— the way it came out of some body to stink: nothing will change it— neither pity nor kindness.

They stack bright pyramids of goods and gather Mop-helves in sidewalk barrels. They keen, they boogie. Paints, fruits, clean bolts of cottons and synthetics, Clarity and plumage of October skies. Way of the costermonger's wooden barrow And also the secular marble cinquefoil and lancet Of the great store. They persist. The jobber tells The teller in the bank and she retells Whatever it is to the shopper and the shopper Mentions it to the retailer by the way. They mutter and stumble, derelict. They write These theys I write. Scant storefront pushbroom Jesus Of Haitian hardware—they travel in shadows, they flog Sephardic softgoods. They strain. Mid-hustle they faint And shrivel. Or snoring on grates they rise to thrive. Bonemen and pumpkins of All Saints. Kol Nidre, Blunt shovel of atonement, a blade of song From the terra-cotta temple: Lord, forgive us Our promises, we chant. Or we churn our wino Syllables and stares on the Avenue. We, they— Jack. Mrs. Whisenant from the bakery. Sam Lee. This is the way, its pavement crackwork burnished With plantain. In strollers they bawl and claw. They flourish. Furniture, Florist, Pets. My mongrel tongue Of nudnik 3 and criminentlies, 4 the tarnished flute And brogue of quidnuncs 5 in the bars, in Casey's Black amber air of spent Hiram Walker, attuned. Sweet ash of White Owl. 6 Ten High. They touch. Eyes blurred Stricken with passion as in a Persian lyric They flower and stroke. They couple. From the Korean, Staples and greens. From the Christian Lebanese, Home electronics. Why is that Friday "Good"? Why "Day of Atonement" for release from vows? Because we tried us, to be at one, because We say as one we traffic, we dice, we stare. Some they remember that won't remember them— Their headlights found me stoned, like a bundled sack Lying in the Avenue, late. They didn't speak My language. For them, a small adventure. They hefted Me over the curb and bore me to an entry Out of the way. Illuminated footwear On both sides. How I stank. Dead drunk. They left me Breathing in my bower between the Halloween Brogans and pumps on crystal pedestals. But I was dead to the world. The midnight city In autumn. Day of attainment, tall saints Who saved me. My taints, day of anointment. Oil Of rose and almond in the haircutting parlor, Motor oil swirling rainbows in gutter water. Ritually unattainted, the congregation File from the place of worship and resume The rumbling drum and hautbois 7 of conversation, Speech of the granary, of the cloven lanes Of traffic, of salvaged silver. Not shriven and yet Not rent, they stride the Avenue, banter, barter. Capering, on fire, they cleave to the riven hub.

Curtains forcing their will against the wind, children sleep, exchanging dreams with seraphim. The city drags itself awake on subway straps; and I, an alarm, awake as a rumor of war, lie stretching into dawn, unasked and unheeded.

Away above a harborful of caulkless houses among the charley noble chimneypots of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines a woman pastes up sails upon the wind hanging out her morning sheets with wooden pins O lovely mammal her nearly naked breasts throw taut shadows when she stretches up to hang at last the last of her so white washed sins but it is wetly amorous and winds itself about her clinging to her skin So caught with arms upraised she tosses back her head in voiceless laughter and in choiceless gesture then shakes out gold hair while in the reachless seascape spaces between the blown white shrouds stand out the bright steamers to kingdom come

He wanders through the crooked streets that mimic river beds Before and breathes the anxious air in traffic filled with tension left from wooded crossroads in attack He shops the windows, happy, where the stalking once was good and his kitchen floor is built on bones of venison once gently roasted. "It's a good place for a party!" he concurs to friends now dressed in jeans. The ground was already beaten smooth and festive by the joy of ancient dances. He feels the warmth, and doesn't know his soul is filled with the spirit of coyotes past.

Now the summer air exerts its syrupy drag on the half-dark City under the strict surveillance of quotation marks. The citizens with their cockades and free will drift off From the magnet of work to the terrible magnet of love. In the far suburbs crenellated of Cartesian yards and gin The tribe of mothers calls the tribe of children in Across the bluing evening. It’s the hour things get To be excellently pointless, like describing the alphabet. Yikes. It’s fine to be here with you watching the great events Without taking part, clinking our ice as they advance Yet remain distant. Like the baker always about to understand Idly sweeping up that he is the recurrence of Napoleon In a baker’s life, always interrupted by the familiar notes Of a childish song, “no more sleepy dreaming,” we float Casually on the surface of the day, staring at the bottom, Jotting in our daybooks, how beautiful, the armies of autumn.

Dawn on the black hill, and up on the roof cats drowsing. Last night, there was a boy who fell off this roof, breaking his back. The wind riffles the cool leaves of the trees. The red clouds above are warm and move slowly. A stray dog appears in the alley below, sniffing the boy on the cobblestones, and a raw wail rises up among chimneys: someone’s unhappy. The crickets were singing all night, and the stars were blown out by the wind. In dawn’s glow, even the eyes of the cats in love were extinguished, the cats the boy watched. The female is crying, no toms are around and nothing can soothe her: not the tops of the trees, not the red clouds. She cries to the wide sky, as if it were still night. The boy was spying on cats making love. The stray dog sniffs the boy’s body and growls; he got here at dawn, fleeing the glow that crept down the far hill. Swimming the river that drenched him as dew drenches fields, he was finally caught by the light. The bitches were still howling. The river runs smoothly, skimmed by birds that drop from red clouds, elated to find their river deserted.

They were travelers, plotting river courses, writing the genesis of unknown people, fugitives with a revolver in one hand, reins in another, merchants among the olive trees, euphorbias, mimosas, emissaries, deserters. Some knew the native tongues; they called themselves by new names in the eastern twilight, different parts of their soul never having learned to live together. Skies burned. Dust covered the palms and minarets as they arrived by the incandescent shore of our city, each with his own little dreams and disasters. Some remained, never to be heard of again. Some left with caravans, wearing native dress — ephemerids. Where are they? What are they used to? The only preserved interview — concerning an artist and explorer. Did he ever speak of his friends in X? Never. The only thing he liked in X was his sister. But did you know that he painted? Oh yes! — some fine things: stemware, a series of watercolors of shoebills and Abdim’s stork.