Sunset
at the Manhattan piers: gray-black,
the
iron-cloaked sky splays vortices of red
into
the Hudson’s unreflecting flow.
Blown
west and out by a colorless breeze,
the
candle of life falls guttering down
into
a carmine fringe above oil tanks,
a
warehoused cloud of umber afterglow,
hugging
the scabrous shore of New Jersey,
a
greedy smoker enveloped in soot.
To
think that Poe and his consumptive Muse
stood
here in April, Eighteen Forty-Four,
his
hopes not dashed by a rainy Sunday —
an
editor thrice, undone, now derelict,
author
of some six and sixty stories,
his
fortune four dollars and fifty cents.
Did
he envision his ruin, and ours?
Did
his Eureka-seeking consciousness
see
rotted piers, blackened with creosote?
Did
rain and wind wash clean the Hudson’s face,
or
was it already an eel-clogged flux
when
he came down the shuddering gangplank?
Who
greeted him? This feral, arched-back cat,
fish-bone
and rat-tail lord of the landing?
Did
he foresee the leather’d lonely wraiths
who’d
come to the abandoned wharf one day
in
a clank-chain unconscious parody
of
drugged and dungeon-doomed Fortunato
and
his captor and master Montresor?
He
gazed through rain and mist at steeple tops,
warehouse
and shop and rooming house — to him
our
blackened brickwork was El Dorado.
He
needed only his ink to conquer
the
world of Broadway with his raven quills —
Gotham
would pay him, and handsomely, too!
Did the lapping waters deceive him thus —
did
no blast of thunder peal to warn him
that
this was a place of rot and rancor?
The
city shrugs at the absolute tide.
I
am here with all my poems. I, too,
have
only four dollars and fifty cents
until
tomorrow’s tedium pays me
brass
coins for passionless hours of typing.
I
am entranced as the toxic river
creeps
up the concrete quay, inviting me,
a
brackish editor hungry for verse,
an
opiate and an end to breathing.
Beneath
the silted piles, the striped bass spawn,
welfare
fish in their unlit tenements.
A
burst of neon comes on behind me,
blinks
on the gray hull of an anchored ship —
green
to red to blue light, flashback of fire
from
window glaze, blinking a palindrome
into
this teeming, illiterate Styx.
Empire State’s cool spire, clean as a snow-cap,
thrusts
up its self-illuminated glory;
southward,
there’s Liberty, pistachio
and
paranoid in her sleepless sunbeams,
interrogated
nightly, not confessing.
It
is not too dark to spy one sailboat,
pass by swiftly, lampless, veering westward;
one
black-winged gull descending to water,
its quills immersed in the neon mirror.
Now
it is
dark. Now every shadow here
must
warily watch for other shadows
(some
come to touch, to be touched, but others —)
I
stay until the sea chill shrivels me,
past
the endurance of parting lovers,
beyond
the feral patience of the cat,
until
all life on legs has crept away.
Still,
I am not alone. The heavy books
I
clasp together, mine and Edgar Poe’s,
form
a dissoluble bond between us.
Poe
stood here and made a sunset midnight.
Poe
cast his raven eyes into this flow
and
uttered rhymes and oaths and promises.
One
night, the river spurned his suicide.
One
night, the river was black with tresses,
red
with heart’s blood, pearled with Virginia’s eyes,
taking
her under, casting him ashore.
One
night, he heard an ululating sob
as
the river whispered the secret name
by
which its forgetful god shall know him,
his
name in glory on the earth’s last day.
[Minor revisions May 3, 2019)
[Minor revisions May 3, 2019)
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