New York City

Exultation of life

In my veins,on the streets,

Exultation of the sky!

Just being here is joy.


Here they come, and come, and come,

The most ambitious, the most desperate,

Burning, faster and faster, to blackness;

The ordinary world,too slow,too old,

Dwindles to nothingness, far behind,

While this fierce fire consumes its devotees.


Too busy to think or feel,

You watch the market rise and fall,

Wondering whether to buy or sell,

And cry out to the neon night.

And if everything is not perfect?

If the requested product is not supplied?

Then break it, destroy it, start again.


What do the soothsayers predict?

What do the financiers foretell?

The god of Now demands fresh blood.

When you visit the oracle,

Bring a sacrifice.

Are you wearing the latest clothes?

Are you humming the latest tunes?

Are you seen by the right people in the right places?

Are you now, are you very very now, are you it?

Are you an angel elect,

Imbued with the Immanence Divine,

Serving your purpose, doing God’s will?


I stroll along the Battery promenade,

Lean against the rail; look out past the Statue of Liberty,

Out towards the hidden Atlantic,

Like the ghost of Herman Melville,

Dreaming of distant isles.


Brooklyn Bridge, great aching poem,

Flight of the winged eye, reaching for heaven!

Pure mathematics sports with joy,

The cables swooping down from the towers

And soaring up again, with unbroken rhythm,

Chords resonating in the gull-slashed air!

Drinks at the Danube Bar on Hudson Street,

Mauve against gold in the candleglow,

High ceilings calling me upward,

As if elegance was all.


In the hall of the Bank of New York on Wall Street,

Whelmed by red terrazzo, dark purple marble,

And sparkling red-orange-gold mosaic tiles,

I throb with the red pulse of money.


In Columbus Park the Chinese gather,

Clapping mah-jongg tiles down on the tables,

And fortune-tellers hang out their red banners

And consult their battered old books.


On a bench in the walled garden of St Luke-in-the-Fields,

In spring, with the first crocuses coming up,

I sit in my squirrel-tailed songbird-coloured tree of words,

Among lilacs, tulips and roses,

With the light on my face,

And the world in my hands,

And everything happy and fine.


Rooting through a bookstore on Broadway,

Smelling the dust and fingerprints of used books,

I chase the unicorn as always,

In my dumb old-fashioned way.


In Washington Square Park the chessplayers

Do single combat under the trees,

Sitting on a slave graveyard,

And a Revolutionary drill ground,

Among musicians,acrobats,comedians and clowns.


The Bayard Building soaring into the sky,

White façade beaming in sunlight,

Dragonfly caryatids, shouldering the cornice,

Wings outstretched to leap into the sky,


In the Russian Turkish Baths on East 10th Street,

After tramping the streets, soaking up the punishment,

The weariness and dread in my bones,

I sit in the steam room,

Sweating out poisons,

And kill myself,intermittently,in the cold pool;

And my soul seems to leave my body

And return soothed and repaired.


In the magic shop,

I watch a silver orb inexplicably levitate,

And the card I have visualised

Rises unaided from the deck…

Interdimensional tricksters,

The salesmen perform legerdemain

With smiling aplomb…


The Empire State Building from the south at sunset:

Parallel steel lines catch the light,

Glowing with red-orange shimmer

Along the thousand-foot shaft to the wings

Of the crown and the spire;

On the summit, you are floating, weightless,

Above the bought-and-paid-for horizon…

Lightning snakes up and down the building,

And St Elmo’s fire hovers,hissing,at the top.

Whimsical god of winds,the tower

Forges a solenoid of weathers,

As snow falls upwards

Or rain travels sideways round .


In Grand Central Terminal,

I stand, watching crowds surge all around,

Sleek and rapid, expertly dodging, adjusting their bodies

With minute efficiency and precision,

Shoulders drawn in like boxers,

Advancing with long purposeful strides,

Jockeying, diving, racing for the goal,

Each on an urgent mission,

None yielding an inch, yet none colliding,

Seeking the shortest path to their destination;

In the Whispering Gallery,

Two people can stand at opposite ends

And ,whispering into the corner,

Hear each other’s voice

Miraculously speaking into the ear,

So close and intimate, as if side by side,

The secret message audible only to them,,

Across the swirling bedlam between.


Any country on earth can be dismantled

And imported here,

Reassembled In the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Just like the Studiolo of Duke Federico da Montefeltro

From his palace at Gubbio:

This wonder ofperspective intarsia,

The myriads of minute wooden tesserae,

And the multiple varieties, cuts and grains

The trompe l’oeil of cabinet doors ajar

Revealing books casually stacked or left open,

A page of the Aeneid visible for sortilege;

A parrot perches in a cage,

A pair of eyeglasses lie neatly folded in their case,

Sand sifts through an hourglass,

A lute lies ready to be picked up and played,

All the duke’s cherished belongings,

As real as if he himself had been made of wood!


Iceskating in Central Park at night,

Under the city lights and stars,

With the sound of Sinatra in the cold air,

Gliding around and around, thrilling

To the chill, and stopping for a cup of hot chocolate,

Frigid fingers burning round a paper cup,

Pouring delicious elixir down my throat,

Watching the Zamboni machine sweep the rink

To glassy smoothness…-

I welcome the gods of New York into my darkness,

To bless me with terrors and ecstasies.


On a Sunday just before Halloween,

At Harlem Meer, as darkness falls,

The children come in their hundreds,

Clutching carved pumpkins with candles inside,

And float their precious star-ships on rafts

Out onto the water…