Queens Cemetery, Setting Sun

Airport bus from JFK cruising through Queens passing huge endless cemetery by Long Island’s old expressway (once a dirt path for wheelless Indians) myriad small tombstones tilted up gesturing statues on parapets stone arms or wings upraised lost among illegible inscriptions And the setting yellow sun painting all of them on one side only with an ochre brush Rows and rows and rows and rows of small stone slabs tilted toward the sun forever While on the far horizon Mannahatta’s great stone slabs skyscraper tombs and parapets casting their own long black shadows over all these long-haired graves the final restless places of old-country potato farmers dustbin pawnbrokers dead dagos and Dublin bouncers tinsmiths and blacksmiths and roofers house painters and house carpenters cabinet makers and cigar makers garment workers and streetcar motormen railroad switchmen and signal salesmen swabbers and sweepers and swampers steam-fitters and key-punch operators ward heelers and labor organizers railroad dicks and smalltime mafiosi shopkeepers and saloon keepers and doormen icemen and middlemen and conmen housekeepers and housewives and dowagers French housemaids and Swedish cooks Brooklyn barmaids and Bronxville butlers opera singers and gandy dancers pitchers and catchers in the days of ragtime baseball poolroom hustlers and fight promoters Catholic sisters of charity parish priests and Irish cops Viennese doctors of delirium now all abandoned in eternity parcels in a dead-letter office inscrutable addresses on them beyond further deliverance in an America wheeling past them and disappearing oblivious into East River’s echoing tunnels down the great American drain