I was fresh off the boat (although it was an airplane)
discovered that the Bowery had moved up to our doorstep
each day three boozehounds staked their spot by sitting on the sidewalk
against the wall just catty-corner facing by the drug store
I used to watch the inebriated triangle play out their sexy games
as she, the Bowery Belle, stretched out her raddled legs
and flirted bottles from one hand to another
while teasing her two raptured rivaling beaux
I watched them from my window while I meekly ironed his shirts
(we did that in those days, we wives of Jimmy Porters
before we looked back, furious, in our own anger later)
I watched while “Dialing for Dollars” brought me old-fashioned movies
starring Claude Raines with the four blonde sisters Lane.
But sometimes I played truant down to Seymour Krim’s apartment
where once there was this party
(I had my first puff there, joint fat as a cheroot;
we Brits upstairs were strictly whiskey drinkers)
and, as I now remember, quite suddenly this sparky man burst in
so full of joy that all his words cascaded into and crammed both my ears
for he had just discovered
(after years of tuning in the mind mathematically to first conceive and then to calculate)
the precise vibrations of the airs which predicate
the music of the spheres ......
the planet’s chords were now so ringing through his being
that even perturbations in Pluto could not, and never would, disturb
those harmonies he heard
whatever he was on, what did it matter
that night his eyes (and both of mine)
were singing ......
As I look back at this, I see these days a very different kind of altered state
I know that tenth street duplex must be gentrified by rent now past compare
I mourn the passing of much penniless art we all accomplished back in those old days
some of us still bear witness that the dialing for dollars we see all around us now
can still be vanquished by we artists who persist writing our poems, painting pictures
creating currency that will not lose cost-value when the Koch-stocked market crashes
as, one of these fine days, I bet my bottom dollar that eventually it will.
discovered that the Bowery had moved up to our doorstep
each day three boozehounds staked their spot by sitting on the sidewalk
against the wall just catty-corner facing by the drug store
I used to watch the inebriated triangle play out their sexy games
as she, the Bowery Belle, stretched out her raddled legs
and flirted bottles from one hand to another
while teasing her two raptured rivaling beaux
I watched them from my window while I meekly ironed his shirts
(we did that in those days, we wives of Jimmy Porters
before we looked back, furious, in our own anger later)
I watched while “Dialing for Dollars” brought me old-fashioned movies
starring Claude Raines with the four blonde sisters Lane.
But sometimes I played truant down to Seymour Krim’s apartment
where once there was this party
(I had my first puff there, joint fat as a cheroot;
we Brits upstairs were strictly whiskey drinkers)
and, as I now remember, quite suddenly this sparky man burst in
so full of joy that all his words cascaded into and crammed both my ears
for he had just discovered
(after years of tuning in the mind mathematically to first conceive and then to calculate)
the precise vibrations of the airs which predicate
the music of the spheres ......
the planet’s chords were now so ringing through his being
that even perturbations in Pluto could not, and never would, disturb
those harmonies he heard
whatever he was on, what did it matter
that night his eyes (and both of mine)
were singing ......
As I look back at this, I see these days a very different kind of altered state
I know that tenth street duplex must be gentrified by rent now past compare
I mourn the passing of much penniless art we all accomplished back in those old days
some of us still bear witness that the dialing for dollars we see all around us now
can still be vanquished by we artists who persist writing our poems, painting pictures
creating currency that will not lose cost-value when the Koch-stocked market crashes
as, one of these fine days, I bet my bottom dollar that eventually it will.
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