Here's another kind of city poem,
this time New York is the city.
To me, New York, I suppose is, or was for years
a kind of center of history.
I'm not at all convinced that the center of history
is not an uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific,
which the Navy is using as a bombing target.
I'm serious.
I'll tell you about that island.
"Night Above the Avenue."
"The whole time that I have lived here, at every moment
somebody has been at the point of birth
behind a window across the street
and somebody behind a window across the street
has been at the point of death.
They have lain there in pain and hope
on and on, and away from the windows,
the dark interiors of their bodies
have been opened to lights.
And they have waited bleeding and have
been frightened and happy.
Unseen by each other, we have been transformed,
and the traffic has flowed away from between them
and me in four directions as the lights have changed
day and night, and I have sat up late
at the kitchen window knowing the news watching the paired
red lights recede from under the windows
down the avenue toward the tunnel under the river.
And the white lights from the park
rushing toward us through the sirens and the music,
and I have wakened in a wind of messages."