So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Since I'm relocating to New York for the next five weeks starting tomorrow, today's selection is one of my favorite poems about New York. I first encountered it the summer I worked as an intern at The Poetry Center in Chicago, where I was tasked with listening to audio recordings of 30 years' worth of poetry readings hosted by the Center. Mark Doty read this poem and it has stayed with me ever since.

Broadway

Under Grand Central's tattered vault

--maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit--

one saxophone blew, and a sheer black scrim

billowed over some minor constellation

under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings

in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws

preening, beaks opening and closing

like those animated knives that unfold all night

in jewelers' windows. For sale,

glass eyes turned outward toward the rain,

the birds lined up like the endless flowers

and cheap gems, the makeshift tables

of secondhand magazines

and shoes the hawkers eye

while they shelter in the doorways of banks.

So many pockets and paper cups

and hands reeled over the weight

of that glittered pavement, and at 103rd

a woman reached to me across the wet roof

of a stranger's car and said, I'm Carlotta,

I'm hungry. She was only asking for change,

so I don't know why I took her hand.

The rooftops were glowing above us,

enormous, crystalline, a second city

lit from within. That night

a man on the downtown local stood up

and said, My name is Ezekiel,

I am a poet, and my poem this evening is called

fall. He stood up straight

to recite, a child reminded of his posture

by the gravity of his text, his hands

hidden in the pockets of his coat.

Love is protected, he said,

the way leaves are packed in snow,

the rubies of fall. God is protecting

the jewel of love for us.

He didn't ask for anything, but I gave him

all the change left in my pocket,

and the man beside me, impulsive, moved,

gave Ezekiel his watch.

It wasn't an expensive watch,

I don't even know if it worked,

but the poet started, then walked away

as if so much good fortune

must be hurried away from,

before anyone realizes it's a mistake.

Carlotta, her stocking cap glazed

like feathers in the rain,

under the radiant towers, the floodlit ramparts,

must have wondered at my impulse to touch her,

which was like touching myself,

the way your own hand feels when you hold it

because you want to feel contained.

She said, You get home safe now, you hear?

In the same way Ezekiel turned back

to the benevolent stranger.

I will write a poem for you tomorrow,

he said. The poem I will write will go like this:

Our ancestors are replenishing

the jewel of love for us.