Landscaped from one of the two mouths of the tunnel, for the many tunnels of this mutated city are monstrous throats that never digest or ever waste what they swallow, without intestine or stomached gargle, how they merely gorge then regurgitate and then gorge themselves again down to the bottom of Broadway — willows groved tightly, their trunks lashed together to prevent them from being uprooted by the tunneling wind, their boughs hung with among many other objects, or forsakings, the harps of the Philharmonic disbanded since last season’s interruption, and then with their strings, all their sections: their violins first and seconds, violas and violoncellos, the occasional weeping, droopy bass, their strings wilting in memory, going loose and de-tuned in the howl coming up from the bay — trees hung not just with bis-biglissandoing harps and with fiddles gutted and bows but with memories, too, and forgettings, pleas and supplications, signs and notes slipped and tied dire:
At Union Square, which is called such still, despite — as the most niggling, let’s say perspisacious, of our sages note — its hosting no more unions now broken, busted, and, too, that it’s not, strictly speaking, a square, though in another sense a calling appropriate, and even accurate, a bissel, if only because misrepresentation is what’s expected, what this promised city does best and has always since first it was found, lies to us, misdirects then destroys…B goes and asks a mensch on a bench if he knows the way to the, hymn — Zimmerman’s…if only to say something, anything, just to feel alive and with it, but the mensch turns to Him and answers with some dyspeptic word, not understood, then spits a lip’s worth of angst on His shoes. At Madison despite, He works up the nerve to stop another mensch, this one older, a pensioner and so He thinks more respectful or honest, asks him what he thinks of Mister Israelien, and also, if you don’t mind, as long as I’m keeping you, is his opinion, you know, regarded as popular, but the mensch he just shrugs, keeps his sunglasses down, taps his cane due west. Then up and eastward at the Library, there He says an exploratory, nervous Shalom to a woman who she only blushes, bites her lips — the mouth mortified — the rest of her ignores if flushing still, then skits down the block, turns the corner and bursts into crying…denied, again that feeling that He doesn’t deserve it, not as much this being alive as being alive in a city, in this city with such life, with such change, and how B, He doesn’t belong, feels what’s worse than abused, debased, it’s turned within — unworthy. My people had been right to exurb themselves early — we deserved Joysey, I should never have left.
