On A Bus At Port Authority

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First thing yesterday, visiting from Boston, we were going
To walk down Broadway below the Lower East Side,
Chinatown, Houston, TriBeca, and Little Italy,
To City Hall and Wall Street where, lighthearted
And gay, Walt Whitman used to browse the glass shop windows
And the eyes of passersby, noticing the parallels
Between the masts that swayed in the breeze on the wharves
And the church spires saved from the pious past
That reached the knees of the trade towers until just recently—
Where the homeless under overhangs slept off hangovers
On the corrugated cardboards that were their only belongings.

We meant to rise from bed, it’s true, at six-thirty sharp,
Drowsy to dawn radio talk and pigeons clucking
On the fire escape, to board the earliest ferry from the dock
Of Battery Park as the sun was coming up, bound
For the Statue of Liberty. To hold the railing on the windy deck,
And get a good look at the tendons in her neck.
But to float on around to Ellis Island then, babbling aloud
Like immigrants again, in Russian, German, and Serbo-Croatian,
Of black breads, babushkas, baskets, and the bends.

And then to wander north, by noon, to the Southeast Asian
Canal Street bazaars. To stride on through so-charming SoHo,
And to zig-zag Manhattan's only crooked streets
In the Village near the Hudson. Take Bleeker to Saint Mark's,
Then back to Washington Square! See Chelsea yield
To the Garment District! See Madison Avenue parallel Park!
Peek at the Whitney, MOMA, the Met. Pause a moment
Where Lennon was shot. And cross the street to rest and talk
In a fabricated copse in Olmsted's Central Park.

Eventually, we planned to feel that rush of compassion
That surges through the elated chambers of the heart
Like a lunchtime crowd at a Midtown crosswalk—that rises
Like an elevator up the spine through a high-rise's ceilings,
Stopping for the widow who lives with her dog on floor number nine,
In apartment thirteen—a feeling that moves through the bowels
Like a subway through a tunnel toward a well-lit station.

But we'd been up too late the night before, in a walk-up kitchen
Conversation with our friend, who fed us pasta and wine,
Well-timed punch lines, and corresponding laughs
That splashed and soaked us as they passed, like dented yellow taxis
In a Times Square rain. So we never got to take
Those elegant paths on up to Lenox in the ruins of Harlem.
We never got to pass between those picnicking patches
Of Indians, Koreans, and Salvadorans. We never got to emerge
From Central Park in the cobbled street to meet the Dutch apparition
Of Peter Stuyvesant in clogs hunting pheasants in his orchard—
Nor the African one of Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughan
Saxophoning and singing their hurt hearts out in clubs boarded up
By the city since then, and used for the shooting of heroin.

We did go out for breakfast and the Sunday Times, however.
Checked out an original piece of sandlot sculpture—
A pretzel-twist of tailpipes, not a bit like the mobiles of Calder.
Wandered on over to walk among the junkies of Tompkins Square Park
In Alphabet City. Caught a play on off-off Broadway—
A Marxist matinee about Galileo by Bertoldt Brecht
On a sober stage in the Bowery. Ate, argued, drank, laughed,
Then went to sleep again on a mattress in a corner. Snored
Like foghorns of foreign ships bound for the New York harbor!
Dreamt of celebrities—Spike Lee, Mia, Yoko, and the Yankees—
And woke up at nine to sibilant Spanish door-stoop chatter,
With those pigeons still clucking on that fire escape.