The City: a poem
Nichols, Robert
I sing of the city revived. Citizen, I cry to you in favor of integration and municipal reconstruction. It is time that you reckoned up the cost of your own follies. Consider: a city wasted at...
...All the coordinates have been brought to bear...
...Junk playgrounds have been established...
...A whole geography could be guessed at, if there were space...
...One is escorted down the three steps of "Le Negre Diabetique" by the chasseur...
...The door of the taxi opens...
...The prehistoric mask of Gov...
...Space recaptured...
...The wheel has de scribed its double arabesque, its exquisite compound parabola, on a field of bare snow...
...Or sit at the window of your favorite pre-raphaelite cafe among the ruins, and watch humanity as it goes by...
...Children play among the debris...
...Drive through these sunken streets which have been recently reclaimed from the New Jersey marshlands by the Department of Marine and Aviation...
...Parades are held...
...Chlorophyll has become scarce...
...They climb barefoot among the fashionable used brick and antique doorknobs salvaged from the old Murray Hill Hotel...
...As the excavations are carried down, games continue to be played on all surfaces...
...His factories have been opened to the blind of all ages, who work there without discrimination, and in the most agreeable circumstances...
...From particles of these faces, from sections of these gaits, gestures, inflections, as well as from an examination of hair and bits of teeth, reconstruct if you will the Great Plain...
...The spirit of applied mathematics broods...
...A small replica of the Gulf Oil building has been reconstructed out of rusted beer cans...
...Proper deductions have been made from roundelays and certain primitive mimes which appear to celebrate in a degenerative form the original Mayflower Compact...
...Deadbeats from all over the world have been assembled, drawn by the smell of chocolate and by the pornographic pictures nailed by the Chamber of Commerce over the open cellar holes, from which music vibrates...
...Now we are getting somewhere...
...All surfaces bear the glacial traces of cars...
...Nothing is left but old postal routes, cracked mains, and monuments torn from their plinths lying among the hardback and huckleberry—species which seem to readily colonize these burned-out areas...
...Refugees from the Tong Wars...
...Come with me...
...Improvements long overdue— and which reaffirm the solidarity of our youngsters with those all over the world everywhere...
...In the main gathering place, which is called "Mauve Square," a statue has been set up in memory of monochrome, who has devoted a large part of his very considerable fortune during the past years towards the rediscovery of pigment...
...A set of dominoes said to belong to the late J. P. Morgan, with counters made from the bones of aboriginal lobstermen, has been found in the ruins of Harvard Club...
...The Jumel Mansion has been reassembled out of the shards of cracked flower pots...
...If there were but room...
...Time has been reinstituted...
...One moves at a snail's pace against the crowd of tourists and melancholy drifters, as if breasting some tangible current...
...Urbs...
...And from modes of ornament and characteristic ways of elongating and flattening certain bones, plot the limit of the Frontier...
...DeWitt Clinton has been dug up...
...Gigantic mushrooms inflated with helium are pulled through the charcoal streets...
...Important mutations in the field of educational policy have already been obtained by the bombardment of field supervisors with electronic particles...
...Consider: a city wasted at the guts like present-day Detroit, or like Carthage, Zabae or ancient Tun Huang whose market stalls have crumbled into dust and whose main squares have become the stony pasture for goats...
...The full Plenum...
...Already three of the six known primary colors have been synthesized, and it is confidently predicted that the entire spectrum, as it was originally worked out, will be rediscovered during the next decades...
...Here minor bruises are permitted, and simple acts of cruelty, bloodshed and routine sexual perversion between peers—within limits set by the Board of Estimate...
...The residuary legatees of the Zuni Indians have come in search of libraries...
...And these may still be used...
...I am told that an exchange of high commissioners of Welfare has been arranged...
...An unbelievable profusion...
...With the receding of the third, seventh and eighteenth waves of traffic, the lungs of the metropole have been pumped dry...
...A new order of nomadic tribesmen from the raw steppes have been drawn by the chain laundries and prospects in the chemical dye industry...
...The last cowpunchers are here...
...On the cornices of the public library, lime-gatherers are at work...
Vol. 8 • July 1961 • No. 3
