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46 THEMINNESOTA REVIEW HUNT HAWKINS NEW YORK At night the bag-ladies bed down on benches in Needle Park. They have millions, people say, stashed somewhere, but prefer to live this way. The heavy lady nearest me takes off her shoes, puts her bag beneath her head. Her ear is full of clotted blood. Fine grit rains down on us from the summer sky. Earlier, on Fifth Avenue, I saw a man drop dead. People walked around him where he lay. Even I was scared. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe he'd jump up with a gun. His hand kept twitching by his side. Finally the policeman who came said it was just a heart attack. My tourist book says 100 years ago this land was all dairy farms down to 42nd St. Corn grew here. Near my hotel a black man pushes against the walls. "The buildings are sliding into the river," he says. "Don't worry," is all I can reply. The stones themselves seem to have sucked the people to this place. The government thinks it can hold together SWANN 47 by selling bonds to pay for welfare and the cops. When the bonds come due, sell some more. A man once asked John Maynard Keynes if we should get anxious about the long run. He just said, "Don't worry. In the long run well all be dead." BRIAN SWANN ISTANBUL I wonder why I've returned to this place that behaves as if a city is cinder-blocks and planks, sheepskins nailed to sides of houses, forgotten, going rank. Where the people live in coal-smoke and kids swim in wide slicks of garbage after work. And I remember when I was a boy, seeing older kids like a foreign race, black with pit or shipyard, drifting through coal-smoke, crumbling streets; and thinking: that is how things are, that's real life, the sizing of a sharp look, the thick gob of spit, the stub of cigaret, the breath that takes in foul air like a joke. ...

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