162 City poems

The train moved me, clothes kept me seated. I watched the tunnel walls blur and my face appear, nicer on black plexiglass. The people carried off like I almost was in the old childhood dream, my mother’s hand, the tornado in the parking lot. Flooring soda and rain, a humble poser, a composed consumer. Come back to me, I whispered to the purifying wind in a country I’d visited years earlier. Come get me, I said to imaginary John Lennon in the passenger seat of my 1984 Volvo. Nothing grows anywhere, I noted in the slick urine grime connecting two underground stations. As for my wallet, it was light in my hand, fictitious, I didn’t deserve it — I held it up in the crowded terminal like a magician’s pigeon. Or I hid it between my knees on the jerking seat. Nobody wanted to touch me, or nobody who wanted to could reach me here, shaken like a screaming child under wet stairs.

Far down, down through the city’s great gaunt gut The gray train rushing bears the weary wind; In the packed cars the fans the crowd’s breath cut, Leaving the sick and heavy air behind. And pale-cheeked children seek the upper door To give their summer jackets to the breeze; Their laugh is swallowed in the deafening roar Of captive wind that moans for fields and seas; Seas cooling warm where native schooners drift Through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep, Waiting for windy waves the keels to lift Lightly among the islands of the deep; Islands of lofty palm trees blooming white That led their perfume to the tropic sea, Where fields lie idle in the dew-drenched night, And the Trades float above them fresh and free.

Across the bridge, where in the morning blow The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain Homeward to drag the black sea-goer’s chain, And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low; Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow, Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain: From Wren’s forgotten belfries, in the rain, Down the blank wharves the dropping octaves go. Forbid not these! Tho’ no man heed, they shower A subtle beauty on the empty hour, From all their dark throats aching and outblown; Aye in the prayerless places welcome most, Like the last gull that up a naked coast Deploys her white and steady wing, alone.

Look! From my window there’s a view of city streets where only lives as dry as tortoises can crawl—the Gallapagos of desire. There is the day of Negroes with red hair and the day of insane women on the subway; there is the day of the word Trieste and the night of the blind man with the electric guitar. But I have no profession. Like a spy I read the papers—Situations Wanted. Surely there is a secret which, if I knew it, would change everything! 2 I have the poor man’s nerve-tic, irony. I see through the illusions of the age! The bell tolls, and the hearse advances, and the mourners follow, for my entertainment. I tread the burning pavement, the streets where drunkards stretch like photographs of civil death and trumpets strangle in electric shelves. The mannequins stare at me scornfully. I know they are pretending all day to be in earnest. And can it be that love is an illusion? When darkness falls on the enormous street the air is filled with Eros, whispering. Eyes, mouths, contrive to meet in silence, fearing they may be prevented. 3 O businessmen like ruins, bankers who are Bastilles, widows, sadder than the shores of lakes, then you were happy, when you still could tremble! But all night long my window sheds tears of light. I seek the word. The word is not forthcoming. O syllables of light ... O dark cathedral ...

These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing Into something forgetful, although angry with history. They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance, Though this is only one example. They emerged until a tower Controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back Into the past for swans and tapering branches, Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless love. Then you are left with an idea of yourself And the feeling of ascending emptiness of the afternoon Which must be charged to the embarrassment of others Who fly by you like beacons. The night is a sentinel. Much of your time has been occupied by creative games Until now, but we have all-inclusive plans for you. We had thought, for instance, of sending you to the middle of the desert, To a violent sea, or of having the closeness of the others be air To you, pressing you back into a startled dream As sea-breezes greet a child’s face. But the past is already here, and you are nursing some private project. The worst is not over, yet I know You will be happy here. Because of the logic Of your situation, which is something no climate can outsmart. Tender and insouciant by turns, you see You have built a mountain of something, Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument, Whose wind is desire starching a petal, Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears.

for Peter Schjeldahl Wake up high up frame bent & turned on Moving slowly & by the numbers light cigarette Dress in basic black & reading a lovely old man’s book: BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN change flashback play cribbage on the Williamsburg Bridge watching the boats sail by the sun, like a monument, move slowly up the sky above the bloody rush: break yr legs & break yr heart kiss the girls & make them cry loving the gods & seeing them die celebrate your own & everyone else’s birth: Make friends forever & go away

To tell the truth, those brick Housing Authority buildings For whose loveliness no soul had planned, Like random dominoes stood, worn out and facing each other, Creating the enclosure that was our home. Long basement corridors connected one house to another And had a special smell, from old bicycles and baby carriages In the storage rooms. The elevators Were used by kissing teenagers. The playground—iron swingchains, fences, iron monkey bars, Iron seesaw handles, doubtless now rusted— Left a strong iron smell on my hands and in the autumn air And rang with cries. To me it is even precious Where they chased the local Mongoloid, yelling “Stupid Joey! Stupid Joey!” Now I’ve said everything nice I can about this.

Soon the summer Now the pleasant purgatory Of spring is over, Soon the choking Humidity In the city On the fire escapes In a sleeveless T-shirt Smoking a cigar In tune with the tremor Of the mindless yellow Commercial traffic Moving in the city, Where no one really Buys a car, American Or otherwise, Where we will, As Rilke said we would Where we will Wake, read, write Long letters And in the avenues Wander restlessly To and fro On foot in The humidity, Where soon I’ll shower, dress, Take the dog out for a piss, And mail this.

The dramatis personae include a fly-specked Monday evening, A cigar store with stagnant windows, Two crooked streets, Six policemen and Louie Glatz. Bass drums mumble and mutter an ominous portent As Louie Glatz holds up the cigar store and backs out with $14.92. Officer Dolan noticed something suspicious, it is supposed, And ordered him to halt, But dangerous, handsome, cross-eye'd Louie the rat Spoke with his gat, Rat-a-tat-tat— Rat-a-tat-tat And Dolan was buried as quickly as possible. But Louie didn't give a good god damn, He ran like a crazy shadow on a shadowy street With five policemen off that beat Hot on his trail, going Blam! Blam!-blam! While rat-a-tat-tat Rat-a-tat-tat Said Louie's gat, So loud that Peter Wendotti rolled away from his wife, Got out of bed to scratch his stomach and shiver on the cold floor Listening to the stammering syllables of instant death Met on secret floors in the big vacant galleries of night. Then Louie sagged and fell and ran. With seven bullets through his caved-in skull and those feeble brains Spilling out like soup. He crawled behind a water-hydrant and stood them off another half minute. "I'm not shot," he yelled, "I'm not shot," he screamed, "it isn't me they've shot in the head," he laughed, "Oh I don't give a damn!" And rat-a-tat-tat Rat-a-tat-tat Muttered the gat Of Louie the rat, While the officers of the law went Blam! Blam!-blam! Soft music. Violins moan like weeds swaying far under water. The vibrant throats of steam-ships hoot a sad defiance at distance and nothing. Space curls its arm across the flat roofs and dreary streets. Bricks bulge and sag. Louie's soul arose through his mouth in the form of a derby hat That danced with cigarette butts and burned matches and specks of dust Where Louie sprawled. Close-up of Dolan's widow. Of Louie's mother. Picture of the fly-specked Monday evening and fade out slow.

Thinking of rain clouds that rose over the city on the first day of the year in the same month I consider that I have lived daily and with eyes open and ears to hear these years across from St Vincent’s Hospital above whose roof those clouds rose its bricks by day a French red under cross facing south blown-up neo-classic facades the tall dark openings between columns at the dawn of history exploded into many windows in a mortised face inside it the ambulances have unloaded after sirens’ howling nearer through traffic on Seventh Avenue long ago I learned not to hear them even when the sirens stop they turn to back in few passers-by stay to look and neither do I at night two long blue windows and one short one on the top floor burn all night many nights when most of the others are out on what floor do they have anything I have seen the building drift moonlit through geraniums late at night when trucks were few moon just past the full upper windows parts of the sky as long as I looked I watched it at Christmas and New Year early in the morning I have seen the nurses ray out through arterial streets in the evening have noticed internes blocks away on doorsteps one foot in the door I have come upon the men in gloves taking out the garbage at all hours piling up mountains of plastic bags white strata with green intermingled and black I have seen one pile catch fire and studied the cloud at the ends of the jets of the hoses the fire engines as near as that red beacons and machine-throb heard by the whole body I have noticed molded containers stacked outside a delivery entrance on Twelfth Street whether meals from a meal factory made up with those mummified for long journeys by plane or specimens for laboratory examination sealed at the prescribed temperatures either way closed delivery and approached faces staring from above crutches or tubular clamps out for tentative walks have paused for turtling wheel-chairs heard visitors talking in wind on each corner while the lights changed and hot dogs were handed over at the curb in the middle of afternoon mustard ketchup onions and relish and police smelling of ether and laundry were going back and I have known them all less than the papers of our days smoke rises from the chimneys do they have an incinerator what for how warm do they believe they have to maintain the air in there several of the windows appear to be made of tin but it may be the light reflected I have imagined bees coming and going on those sills though I have never seen them who was St Vincent