Near Jeffrey's Hook

1/ No one is living here now who can say What it was once called by the Lenapé,

Who must have given it a proper name Before the Dutchmen and the British came.

They lived here lightly, nourished on demand, And signified their tenure of the land

With firesites, with mounds of oyster shells, Flint arrowheads, clay bowls, dog burials—

Remnants that come to light now and again. Their present was as it had always been

While ours isn't what it used to be, So we imagine what we cannot see:

Propulsive figures in a bark canoe Whose blades divide the river's stream in two,

Now gliding skillfully along the shore, An image from a present long before.

2/ We see what they could never have imagined: One Eighty-first Street's still evolving pageant

Of up and coming keeps on coming up, Bright oddments caught in a kaleidoscope—

A single orange skin, expertly twirled Will wrap itself three times around the world!

Here are peeled oranges in plastic sacks, Electric storefronts filled with shirts and slacks

Advertised at nearly wholesale prices; Here someone sells sugar-syrup ices,

And in the window next door is a frieze Of chickens spitted on rotisseries;

—And if the river where the street concludes No longer summons up archaic moods,

On certain evenings it reflects Monet's Sunsets of pinks and oily, buttery grays . . .

3/ We thought that what was possible must be, Moved to invention by the necessity

Of finding needs inventions satisfied: Necessity might be a stream too wide

To get the goods across in half an hour. As we became more certain of our power,

We couldn't help but act on what we knew: The inconvenience of the river grew

More noticeable until everyone Agreed that something really must be done:

A river, though it isn't real estate, Can be exploited just like real estate.

Laid end-to-end, sticks of dynamite filled The hollow tubes mechanically drilled

Into Manhattan's ancient upper crust, Which cracked up in a sudden cloud of dust.

4/ The river yields, whatever its intention, To engineering's silver-spanned suspension . . .

Blasting left floors and windows all askew In buildings that went up in all the new

Neighborhoods along the northwest ridge, A bonus from construction of the Bridge.

Five years ago we moved to one such, built In 1925. A perceptible tilt

Was proven when we let a marble roll From one room to another down the hall

Until it stopped to listen by the door, Explosions having modified the floor

Three quarters of a century ago. Further explosions brought a steady flow

Of refugees into the neighborhood, Fleeing from the dominion of the blood.

5/ The German Jews and the Dominicans Were followed here by actors and musicians

From more expensive neighborhoods, intent On finding a lge apt, rv vu, low rent.

We followed them, their violins and basses And sundry other instruments in cases

Up the escalator at One Eighty-first And out onto the street where they dispersed,

Drawn by the life that goes on after work; Or walked with them across Fort Bennett Park

Until, whether in couples or alone, They sought a privacy much like our own,

Sustainable for those who do not mind The paradox that freedom lies behind

A triple-locked door in an uncertain hall. (It is called an apartment, after all.)

6/ Here is the river flowing as it will, Here and beyond us always, never still,

Sustaining and sustainable for now. No need for us to work things out or through,

When it has done that for us, as it seems, And offers its assurances in dreams:

Tonight, it somehow rises to our floor And slides between the threshold and the door—

Is it rehearsing for some future case? Then opens a window on another space

That we, only by leaning out into, Can draw within: a partial river view

And a corner of the bridge, brilliantly lit By nighttime traffic passing over it—

An image held as we return to sleep, Of knees...