from Metaphysics and Memory, available online wherever books are sold
So I’m headed down Bay Street coming up on Queen
Watching as the clots of tourists
Coagulate on Cumberland,
Where the sea, with each contraction of its tireless heart
Pumps them daily through the narrow capillaries
Of this hallowed organism,
Raising it to life.
Storefronts lift their droopy lids,
Doors yawn wide and close again
On creaking joints,
While the rhythmic clip-clop of regal hooves
On cobbled stones
Mixes with the resonant hum of laughter
And the vibrant ring of commerce,
As the scent of some unknown spice
Rises on the cloud of the city’s thick breath
That seeps from an unseen cavity
Far below
Where the slathery pavement now lies
Hot to the touch.
A right on Broad, a left on Church
And I’m immersed in a garden paradise
Of evanescent glimpses
Of graceful courtyards and noble residences
That close off or fall away
As each successive wall or corner intrudes
And so lie just out of sight.
It was in these inner sanctums
The ubiquitous markers tell us
That worlds once met.
Amid this dazzling maze
Of narrow lanes and twisting alleyways
Of varicolored plaster
And impossibly long piazzas
Bedecked with vines and petals
Interwoven into the latticework
Of some exotic style,
Georgian, perhaps, or Federal maybe,
Each stamped with the omnipresent gaslights
That forever burnIn silent memorial,
I can almost get why
In all this impenetrable beauty
And this irresistible grace,
It’s hard to hear
The creaking at the dock of the ominous vessel
Hull stained black and rotted from the endless crossings
And the clink of somber chains
And the brazen stares
And the muted whispers
As the ragged souls disembark
And take the lonely march just down the way
To the sullied platform where hearts and lives
Are torn like curtains,
Let alone to remember
That the splendor that once
Broadcast like a beacon from this tiny
Spire-spangled square,
Shone with the brilliant soul-light
That made ghosts of living men.
This is sacred ground, to be sure
But not for the gilded deposition
Of its honor roll of privileged citizens,
But for the forgotten remains
That lie scattered
Along its coastal haunts.
It’s all still here,
The imbalanced scale, the cruel indifference,
From the besotted patrons that saturate its streets
To the relentless march of gentrification through its rundown quarters
Hey–we want that too,
To the echoes of the gunshots in the sanctuary
Where Dr. King once spoke
So many years ago,
To the invisible wall that still looms large
And sections off
Inch by inch, line by line
Precept by precept–
And I wonder
As I round the storied Battery
And turn again home,
Past the crumbling facades
And the dubious cannons
And the tragic remnant
Out there in the blue somewhere
Of that sibling rivalry
As old as time,
Whether Adam ever gave in to the prevailing urge–
To turn his back upon the broken world
The world that he had made,
Tiptoe quietly back inside the fabled walls
Where God once walked,
Shut the imaginary door,
Breathe in again the scent
Of its tainted fruits
And pretend
The whole thing never happened–
© Copyright Jesse Hamilton. All rights reserved.
