Hal Fondren was there, and Bobby Fizdale,
John Gruen and Jane -- Wilson, that is,
Morris Golde, and a number of others
who were already highly visible on the scene
when I appeared in the background, as a young poet, thirty
years ago this spring. ìHow are you?î is the question I kept hearing
from the members of this contingent
as I milled about in the clinical orchards of sociability.
How am I? Feeling old, I wanted to say,
as a birthday approached from the end of the week,
but these people had ten to fifteen years on me then,
and of course, as is the mathematical way, still did;

and on the other hand there were these clumps of fashionable young men
who obviously werenít even born when Frank died. Which was more
depressing?

Itís a push, as a bookie would say, from his bit part in Guys and Dolls.
And Frankís delightful sister Maureen was there, of course;
I donít remember if I ever told her that my first ìseriousî girlfriend,
in the third grade, was an Irish girl named Maureen, but I guess
Iím telling her now, after a fashion, and this way everybody else
gets to listen in, and be bored, too.
And I guess I could tell Brad Gooch
that in World War II all destroyers were called ìtin cans,î
not just the type Frank served on,
and the battleship Missouri was called the Mighty Mo, not the Old Mo,
but I suppose Iím telling him now, etcetera.

Itís the first unpleasantly humid day in June, maybe thatís why I feel neglected and out of it,
not really involved with the art and poetry world
that still buzzes with participants in Philip Taaffeís huge
and strangely elegant space. Out on the terrace,
I notice the motif of paired and facing human-headed winged bulls
that decorates in banded strips the side of the office building next door.
The Assyrian Building, I think, an opportunity for Julius Knipl,
real-estate photographer, although heís as fictional
as I feel uncomfortably real. I wonder what kind of businesses
rent space there, I continue to myself,
since I donít feel like talking to anyone at the moment. Listen,
Frank cuts in, whatís all this Assyrian baloney? Winged bulls?
Winged bull-you-know-what! And how can anybody possibly feel too real? Why donít you trim the fat off your no-moss mind and try to be at least
as entertaining as you used to think you were? God knows
I certainly wouldnít miss that kind of opportunity.
Thatís not fair, I answer, your just showing up right now
would be entertainment enough,
you wouldnít have to say a word.
Well, I could take their minds off that pretty quick
by showing an interest in their existences. The best way
to keep from feeling sorry for yourself is to get interested
in someone else; you know that. I certainly still know that,
in fact itís exactly what Iím doing right now.
Yes, of course youíre right, but I just donít seem to be in the mood.
Donít be truculent, youíre not young enough anymore. Thereís
John Ashbery, now go over and say hello. Itís thirty years later
and Iím still getting you invited to parties, but this
is the last time. Youíre on your own for the rest of this saga, baby,
as Siegfried said to Brunhilde on the way up to Valhalla,
Iím going to get a drink!

Downtown Song

I know itís of undetectable interest at best,
but the post-Platonic bees of encyclopedic irrelevance
that periodically fill my head with their redundant teeming
have escaped.

I live on Warren Street, for example,
who here can remember Warrenís first name?

(Who cares? Who could possibly give a damn?)

Not even me, most of the time; but it was Pete,
Admiral Sir Peter Warren;
he relieved the French and Spanish of the contents of two dozen ships
in the sun-drenched and entrepreneurial Caribbean
and with the proceeds purchased 300 respectable acres in Greenwich
Village.

In 1744. Ah, those were the days when the Greenwich Street road
could get flooded by the Hudson, in an early civilized detail
that wound its muddy way through the cityís North Ward . . .
of which Warren Street was the northerly inhabited boundary by 1755,
and it can still seem pretty deserted,
nestled among the catalpa and persimmons,
the thickets and copses,
on the southern edge of Lower Tribeca.

I stare out the window at them,
because I should probably be doing something else,
as if I were still back in school,
supposed to be learning something that could be of use.
But I hear the recess bell and go outside to reality,
in time to see Joe Murray, Johnny Chambers, Joey Reade,
Jimmy Duane, Tommy and Lenny Lispenard, and Benny ìNorthî Moore
disappear around their respective corners,
as if West Broadway were still Chapel Street,
and they were on the way back from Trinity Church,
outlined in prosperous rectitude.

Apropos of yet further inconsequence,
Warrenís mansion was surrounded by Charles, Perry, Bleecker
and Amos (now neutered to 10th St.),
and maybe was glimpsed in construction
by the Reverend Peter Nicholas Somers,
my relative just off the boat auf Hamburg,
as he continued on up the Hudson in 1745
to keep the Palatines of Schoharie
on the newly Fenimore-Cooperized paths of Lutheran righteousness,
as well as to baptize some 85 heathen Indians,
though it would take him 46 years to accomplish that,

and in the meantime Warren had married heiress Susannah de Lancey,
though that streetís first name would be Jim not Susie,
if I could permit myself such a familiarity
with a thoroughfare so far off to the east;
and although you couldnít tell from all this rambling,
June has been Mental Health Month here in New York,
and I didnít know how to celebrate,
and already July has put in an opening appearance.
Supermanís first appearance,
during Mental Health Month, 1938, just a year before mine,
is now worth a hundred thousand dollars, I read somewhere.
So I think about taking a walk up fashionable Staple Street,
the bustling highway that connects Lower with Middle Tribeca
midway beneath the Bridge of Inscrutability right above Jay,
to the Mercantile Exchange on Harrison Street
to see if my own first appearance
might have accrued any such retrospective value.

Anticipating the answer, I wander instead
over to the Food Euphorium on the Greewich Street road,
and amble down its fabled Aisle of Crumbs,
possibly the last of the shredded wheat
I was looking for. Nothing
has remained undissipated today,
including the components of the atmosphere itself,
through which it seems that a whole box of meteorological crayons has
exploded, but left everything a pale, mental-health gray;
while the important answers continue to bounce away, football-like,
just out of reach, down the Aisle of Forbidding Fruit,
past the cash machine and back out the door,
where Tony Lispenard looks in vain for Anthony Street,
having been displaced by Billy Worth.

Iím probably lucky, really, that my appearance, at whatever time,
has no real commercial value,
as Batman and I are about the same age, too,
and his editor recently finished him off, just like that,
washed and ironed his uniform,
and gave it away to somebody else, just like that.

And although I have edited myself terminally too,
and will do so again in a minute,
I have yet an extrinsic existence
which, hours from now I will be counting on to stumble across the truth,
nuggets of amber that in darkest night
may yet glitter in the Tribecan landscape,
until returned to invisibility by the sun
on its diurnal roll down from City Hall
to illuminate Admiral Warrenís cenotaph
at the end of his street in Hudson Park,
before exploding into more generalized bits of morning light.

Or it may be a rhinoceros that is charging down the street
like a paradigm of traffic
that with a twist of its horn
keeps me awake in the morning scene,
and punctures the space between historical reality,
layer upon layer,
and no information at all.

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