I
What sounds make your name?
What clay
can sculpt
your eyes?
II
Do I hear the sounds
of cars passing by?
Do I feel
the vibrations
of concrete
and air?
The city before me
is wide
and near and dark.
The lights rise
from the ground
as greens and
reds and
whites –
The busy traffic
of millions wafts
in the summer’s airs, within
the warm night’s
airs.
I can feel
the energy,
the pulse
of the people,
beating,
beating –
III
All the black morn and blue sound
wakes the people.
The people rise to
confront their work.
The financier wakes
with the plumber; the restaurateur
rises with the carpenter;
the taxis roll with the subways;
the men eye
the women; the women eye
the children; the policemen and
policewomen
guard the city;
the batons and pistols
guard the city
from the same.
The plots and angers of
this city fade away
in the majesty of
this city; the refuse of
this city piles – is lifted away,
is piled
again
and
again –
IV
This is the song
of the city, the sound
of men working and
women readying in
the early hours, breathing in
the cool morning airs – preparing
for the heat of the day, preparing
for the wonder of days
to come –
V
What histories lie with the cities?
What voices and ghosts
can be heard speaking, issuing
commands and
precedents?
What do the old bedrocks bequeath?
What sands and
sounds still rustle upon
these forested shores?
Mannahatta –
deep port, lovely land
of greens and
deer and
fish swimming
in the streams, swimming
from the oceans and
to the oceans.
The Ancient Hudson sings
all the ways through
New York, glistening and
permeating
for all the peoples –
singing the sounds
of lathing waters
to all the peoples –
VI
Have you forgotten
the sounds of the treading deer
and rabbit’s feet,
mine city? Have you lost
your sense of nature, of growth and
teeming life? I give you my hand,
you dwellers, and
I take you to
the ancient paths
of hunters and deer; toward
the gentle-speak
of the trees,
we go –
Hear
the static
of the airs –
VII
Wars have been predicated and made
at your behest – You seat of power,
You seat of country.
Yet you
forget yourself,
you make yourself
strange, foreign
in the Image of Man. So much
industry is made within
the hands of these men and
women, generation after
generation – as a father leaves
behind to his sons and
daughters
the farmstead,
the bible,
the constitutions,
the learning and
know-how –
VIII
You, too, mine dearest of cities
shall leave
an imprint upon all
the world, a tune for all
the world
to know and remember.
Before the seas come to swell
o’er your roads and towers,
before the seas
reclaim the lands they left, I will
love thee.
And again
Nature will make her course
throughout. Nature
will make her cause throughout
even before mine life
is done –
____
Jack Kelly is a writer and poet. His work is predicated on nature, spirituality, and candid autobiography. His touchstones are Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. He lives in New York.
