Classic and Contemporary Poetry
HUDSON, by HUGH SEIDMAN First Line: Unwavering noon, self-minus Subject(s): Hudson River | ||||||||
unwavering noon, self-minus sun flake on the levels of gold there are names for these things: rose, brick, plate glass the annunciation of the sparrow a gene for anxiety add hope, fear, greed, desire no rest but the shade to which a sun implodes perhaps on other worlds others walk streets muse on the weather psyches built, say, on a double sun of unwavering noon the balm of such congruence thick, white, stick bicyclists painted on the esplanade to Chambers glinting Jersey cars helicopter blades under a ledge of cloud alien first descent past the Trade Towers drifting in on the flyway to LaGuardia landscape, local, locale: the man-made made man trying to open to something like days' unraveling waves blue pulled toward fire out toward the skyscraper lights ancient mausoleums upheavals from personal terror dark pier jut into dark water turquoise, indigo, aqua, lapis; under the molten, under the bruise of night blood in your lips as a man I violated the boundary of your mouth I say this because in the phantasmagoria I was woman and man in another story you turn men to stone though here, out of narrative, poignant at Morton Street against the twilight incomprehensible rain under sun heap-leached haze-gold fused into evening water's green-grey dense pliance shadowed face that bends to the shadows to drink and be salvaged tiered buildings like vast Titanics yellow truck-trailer's anonymous corpse conjoined to the numberless a boy swept from the rocks at the Verrazano stanchion tomb cold draining past liberty it need not cohere but how could it not? without context, for which all are accountable this is for you of the future: one was here who is gone, into the eigen levels Copyright © 1999 by The Modern Poetry Association. This poem appears in the June 2000 issue of Poetry Magazine. http://www.poetrymagazine.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ELEGY; FOR JAMES WRIGHT by GREGORY ORR BARGE LIGHTS ON THE HUDSON by DICK ALLEN THE HUDSON by GEORGE SIDNEY HELLMAN A SCENE ON THE BANKS OF THE HUDSON by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT DOBBS HIS FERRY; A LEGEND OF THE LOWER HUDSON by WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER CHELSEA, 1860 by ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE THE HUDSON by MARGETTA FAUGERES ON THE CITY ENCROACHMENTS ON THE RIVER HUDSON, 1800 by PHILIP FRENEAU GREAT IS DIANA OF THE MANNAHATTOES! by ARTHUR GUITERMAN TWENTY-FOUR HOKKU ON A MODERN THEME by AMY LOWELL |
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