Art and Politics / Politics and Art

New York Epic

35 New York Epic O West Side Street that I am— I dip my toes into the Hudson my head wreathed in trees of Central Park asphalt and macadam graft my skin tall buildings lift my voices my glimmering children sled and tub slide down Dead Man’s Hill run to school buy pizza and play ball blessed by sun rain snow and orderly lives while at the corner a big-bellied woman laughs through spaces between her teeth and sings with musicians the sip of wine left in a bottle I caress the feet of gleaning-eyed girls dogwalkers and women in pride of their pregnancy and wheels of the order boy’s bicycle and roots of wild-armed ginkgoes I ache with the aged and belch manhole covers fire little bursts to let off steam get repaired when and where traffic is heavy while subway trains rattle my spine I crawl around Riverside Park carry the stream of us to the river the scream in the night the boombox autos the gunshot or backfire the hammering renovations going co-op or condo Gray gull hovers above me Brahms pours out of a window 36 pigeonlady carries her breadsack winterwoman is wearing a scarf gloves and boots in July Doormen have ended their strike lovers in the grass stirring among dandelions gather boatcries make a bouquet of two colors Park mother stands among swings and slides and small children firming a station of handkerchiefs And the poet waits with oceanic embrace with stanchions of praise for the firemen and neighbors who come to help neighbors escape the red mountain of cries from a tenement building spitting out residents who flee down fire escapes and fall to wet snow The poet praises peace marchers marking the true line of this country she celebrates the tall ships slowly grandly moving upriver and ambulances rushing pain to sanctuaries she utters those who have seen what they cannot bear and sit in a doorway of dissolving bones 37 I hold them all for awhile until they drift on and I am left with a smear of moonlight On that September 11th firemen rode uptown and walked across me in ghostly uniforms in their honor of white dust the shock time grasping all together I am steamrollered into its grief its broken jawbone sidewalks its arteries torn open its shredded wires now spliced in me with rainwind and heatwave with pipes in me the subway in me the waste in me the blood in me thickening I shudder along steel pilings drilled into foundation of a new building a fault line quivers to the north heat-pain awaiting signals from the river from the cooling ocean to the deepest hunkering leviathan Impulse of rain vaults across waters pelts me with world-horror triggers chaos around me wild with Baghdad and Fallujah 38 the bomb craters of Kabul my gutters weep khaki and body parts wail with prayers from mosques and temples market air perfumed with sweet breath of dying children and sparked with random light of exploding eyeballs drowning in oil ripped from the earth set afire in the land and on waters burning me burning this street burning its heart out until no one comes home to me whole I am you—your lives run through me within me I am you and whatever you are intending stained by indelible ashes blown five miles uptown in an inconsolable shroud of acrid taste and trembling trembling trembling with continuing offense of a distant folly Read by the author at the People’s Poetry Gathering, May 5–7, 2006, CUNY Graduate Center. ...