Poetry Friday: In Love with New York City

Can't you just hear Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue starting ....the famous upward climb of the clarinet....?

I'm a New-York-City-O-Phile. I love the city for all kinds of reasons, but also I also love it irrationally. I love what's energetic and creative about it, but I also love what's messy and sorrowful about it. Saying I love New York City feels a little like saying I love people, which I do. Well, on bad days, I get cranky and complain about politicians and greedy CEO's and and and.... But in general, I do like people quite a bit. And New York City has plenty of them.

New York City. It's not Wordsworth's Lake District, that's for sure. You don't really wander lonely as a cloud in the streets of Manhattan, though sometimes you're lonely as a person in the middle of millions of other people. The city is all about people, and that came through clear as a blue September sky last Sunday, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. All the people, all their stories of that day - I have to admit, it hurt, especially backgrounded by Paul Simon singing Sounds of Silence at the memorial.  But instead of hurting, instead of despairing, I'm going to offer up Allen Ginsberg's amazing poem, "My Sad Self," for Poetry Friday. Bad title, I know, but a good poem. Ginsberg wrote it in 1958 and dedicated it to Frank O'Hara, another poet who loved New York City. 

My Sad Self

  by Allen Ginsberg

              To Frank O’Hara

Sometimes when my eyes are red

I go up on top of the RCA Building

          and gaze at my world, Manhattan—

                     my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in,

                           lofts, beds, coldwater flats

—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,

          its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men

               walking the size of specks of wool—

   Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,

          sun go down over New Jersey where I was born

             & Paterson where I played with ants—

   my later loves on 15th Street,

          my greater loves of Lower East Side,

             my once fabulous amours in the Bronx   

                                        faraway—

   paths crossing in these hidden streets,

      my history summed up, my absences   

             and ecstasies in Harlem—

      —sun shining down on all I own

       in one eyeblink to the horizon

               in my last eternity—

                                     matter is water.

Sad,

      I take the elevator and go

             down, pondering,

and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s

                                           plateglass, faces,

             questioning after who loves,

      and stop, bemused

             in front of an automobile shopwindow

      standing lost in calm thought,

             traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me   

                      waiting for a moment when ...

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to

                      the romantic war news on the radio   

                                     ... all movement stops

& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,   

      tenderness flowing thru the buildings,

             my fingertips touching reality’s face,

      my own face streaked with tears in the mirror   

             of some window—at dusk—

                                     where I have no desire—

      for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese   

                      lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,

          Man struggling up the street

                     with packages, newspapers,

                                           ties, beautiful suits   

                     toward his desire

          Man, woman, streaming over the pavements   

                     red lights clocking hurried watches &   

                            movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading

          so crosswise, honking, lengthily,

                            by avenues

          stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums

                            thru such halting traffic

                                           screaming cars and engines   

so painfully to this

          countryside, this graveyard

                     this stillness

                                           on deathbed or mountain   

          once seen

                            never regained or desired

                                           in the mind to come

where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear.

------------------

Ginsberg Young

Ginsberg Old

The poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by Amy Ludwig Vanderwater over at The Poem Farm. Head over there to see what other people have posted.