From the light of California
elevating
dissipating
To your brownstone weight
As if the dead were grounding you
In habits of thought
In those traditions
Driving our peril, all our ambitions
I feel New York reach for my ankles
saying
Stay
Here, with the morning paper, tulips and taxicabs
Humming subway
And intellectuals! Celebrities!
Gays
Brooklyn, an uncouth relative
Whom also you love
Who also reminds you
Of the spice and herb that comprise
This hearty stew
Ah, but in California!
It's more like fasting
on fruit juices
and lemons,
on mint and merlot
There, we are reaching
Out beyond the shoreline
Toward the sunshine
mentally, I mean, in our minds
Which is why we seem, sometimes
so unstable
Yet I feel corruption here,
Drag of gravity in New York
In the neighborhoods
Also there is fear
a quiet sadness in Gramercy Park
and Washington Square ...
Crumbling cemeteries, full and
spilling over
Like this tiny graveyard,
of Jew bones on 11th
Bookended by landmarks, salient tomes
leaning in,
cloistered in histories
harboring their mysteries:
ancient violence,
archaic neurosis
Here, the lighter questions go unasked,
Or are brought to the dark night
of the past
To be analyzed and dissected
To be accepted and rejected
(the psychotherapist mourned
at breakfast)
And this charge in the air
The possibilities ...
Sublime despair!
And a change in the air
Saplings unfurling
With life, windowboxes
Testifying!
here and there
For, nonetheless
From the Bronx to Brooklyn
To Santa Cruz, C A
In the spring
The trees all wake up
Knowing deeply
And begin to bloom
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