I
Fresh mollusk morning puts a foot
out from its bivalve.
Behind us skeleton of sea
cucumber, microscopic
buttons, tables, plates, wheels,
and anchors in its skin.
A hydroid, wrasse in hundreds,
the anchovy, the horse mussel,
blue sturgeon, spiny cockle,
underwater fairy palm expanding.
Before us land,
the goat in open field.
The milk is marketed.
Attend our table.
For the evening is the city’s—
like a shell forced open,
and the foreign matter
shining sea-forced pearl.
The great names, like the sand,
the fluorspar and the soda ash,
make a blue aventurine glass
for this city
that as you enter, Weep,
it says at either panel
of the door, and rises
from the base in one piece,
one of two stone figures
with her head bowed;
and above, a lion rampant
on his hind feet, royally
clawing, tail whipped up.
This way the little banjo
music enters the hotel.
This way the channeled ceiling
luminaires of the National
Bank of Commer
cemetal finish crystal ground floor
and small grilled windows
the banking hours.
Lamp with goddess
holding twin fish,
ivory-carved Japanese lady,
hands crossed over breast,
holding on her head
the electric bulbs
and batik lamp-shade.
II
Immigrants from Lodz
in a furnished room
close to the stores.
Porcelain pitcher,
bath and hand towels
on the bed rails.
A new sign goes
into the window~-Smocking
Hemstitching, Rhinestone Setting.
Come, great city!
Petroleum oil,
domestic sulphite, old paper,
newsroll contract, short wool,
kip, Ohio & Pa. fleeces,
fine up-river rubber,
tank plates, wire nails,
China wood-oil, mason’s lime,
pine roofers, spruce lath,
basket-fired Japan tea,
the white Singapore pepper,
burlap, Newfoundland cod.
At least we’ll have a snack.
This city has full powers of
attorney to protect its friends.
One hour from here a loggia
above the pepper trees,
a tiny cascade and vines
above the bath house,
men and women driving
on the fairway, laughing,
surrounded by Galloway
pottery, garden furniture
and white daisies.
III
When the light sprang from the sea, blowing,
the windows sintered and blew like Venus
on my younger brother.
Tenderness and the idea
caught one like an animal
in night photography.
Contested between two responsibilities
like a gizzard thrown to two dogs,
judging between two faiths,
I saw the city
changed, set up like laboratory
glassware for amines of herring brine,
the malic acid of the sea buckthorn,
glass-enclosed prescription balance
steel and agate Fabrik Köln,
a physics clear as alcohol,
La Vita Nuova, I hardly knew.
Creditors dined at the Cliquot Club.
They read the papers, trade changed.
Their horses died, the big-bellied.
Their dogs slept in the steam heat.
In an ambulance with modest
glass doors and a silver cross
a surgeon, delicate nickel-plate
instruments are laid on trays,
illuminated on the operating table
naked glassblowers,
gunsmiths, barbers, clerks, importers,
old men from hotels, pink and tailored,
naphtha-smelling Irish priests.
Cravat-and-boy face of the movie usher.
Frankel, Shmulik, Old Country watchmakers.
Then a white horse in the park.
Cigars and politics.
The city wrapped in cellophane.
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