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Perpendicular and tough,
Silent as a cooling breath,
New York’s upper stories climb
Casual and off the cuff.
In the streets the people rush
Busily about their death
Always conscious that there might
Never be another time.
Who, if with the crudest brush,
Would have painted such a sight?
Bijou dwellings on the twelfth,
Smart apartments further up,Make from steel strip and from stone
Modern metaphors for health.
Iced martinis radiate,
Formal as a china cup,
Recent versions of the Good –
Never, never be alone,
Never think but meditate,
Never frankly look at blood.
Elsewhere in this concrete town
Someone eats his simple meal,By his side an open book,
On his face a simple frown.
Plato, Aristotle then
Grand Plotinus on the Real
Teach him that in certain truths,
Apprehended in a look,
He must seek the fate of men.
Meanwhile, New York moves and moves.
Broadway scintillates with light,
River wharfs are like a coast,Heliports are active with
Non-stop sorties through the night.
No one could refuse to be,
Living in this frantic boast,
Less than fully self-obsessed,
More prepared to take than give.
Bistros share the comity
Of the fashionably dressed.
Distant countries, distant states,
Stir their milky bedtime drinks,Concentrate their partial minds
On their partial minor fates.
Small-town talk of what men earn,
Judgement in a thousand winks,
Keep the local pundit’s head
Dodging round the lowered blinds;
Little, though, there is to learn
From the bookshelf or the bed.
New York like a huge machine
Will not deal with what is small,Wants its denizens to be
Ultra-smart and very mean.
Ardent in the singles bars
Venus having had a ball
Proffers plastic ecstasy
To some expert on C.B. –
Sketching tail lights of the cars
Mondrian works frenziedly.
Why should anyone desire
To exist in such a way?Probably because we all
Love a chance to play with fire.
New Yorkers have answers to
All the questions of the day;
Treat their artists with disdain,
Pull them down from ten feet tall,
Cut them at a private view
And then take them up again.
Nightfall tells you everything.
Taller than the tallest dreamBuildings glitter in the sky,
Distant cliffs where sirens sing:
“Happiness is being chic,
Things are not quite as they seem,
In a full engagement book
Lurks success for you and I;
Are you strong or are you weak?
Wear your most deceiving look.”
When, forgetful, people die
(Not a word to bandy here)Eighty stories wrapped in glass
Will not yield a single sigh.
Sunset, sunrise, afternoon
Through the plaza downward peer,
Distant on a Perspex roof,
Checking that the minutes pass.
New York ladies lift a spoon
Actively in search of youth.
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© February 1981; revised April 2001