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Massive systems of water pipes, sewers, steam pipes, gas mains, electrical wires, railroad tracks, collective excrement, underworld elements linking shadows, drives and dreams. We all become urban subjects, rushing, pushing, walking, striving to be separate and together. Living in a faster tempo and temper, greater tension, increased irritability. A million men and women come charging onto Manhattan each weekday morning, compressing all life, all races and breeds, into a small island while adding music like the chant of bees.
The city is the crucible of our being, the inviolable center, the symmetry, the balance, the sanctuary, the marriage of heaven and earth, the end of our wandering, the first place we could belong, the story we make of our lives. We must stand in the presence of its mystery. At every intersection I push a button to cross the street. In every block or two there is a grocery store, a food wagon, a newsstand, a shoeshine shack, a dry cleaner, a laundry, a delicatessen, a flower shop, a movie house, a stationer, a tailor, a drugstore, a garage, a tearoom, a saloon, a hardware store, a liquor store, a shoe-repair shop. I join the rushing herd, imagining stories of hope behind every window, people dining together, reading, working, making love, creating their lives. A man shot and killed his wife in a fit of jealousy. A cornice or contour stone falls every year killing some citizen. Hysteria, inadequate schools, crowded playgrounds, unimproved highways, bridges that are bottlenecks, smog and dirty air are mere distractions compared to the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty, immense, and bigger than myself. The city will seduce me subtly, imperceptibly, forcefully, while I rush and react, asleep in my perpetual trance. Itās as if some soulless machine has made us. Instead of being religious we become urban.
W Roger Carlisle is a 75-year-old, semi-retired physician. HeĀ currently volunteers and works in a free medical clinic for patientsĀ living in poverty. He is on a journey of returning home to betterĀ understand himself through poetry. He hopes he is becoming moreĀ humble in the process.
List format captures the hustle of NYC, describing the city more than any modifier could.
Brilliantly descriptive, capturing the atmosphere of a big town.