It’s not that I’ve forgotten
the romance of big city streets,
vibrating with collective energy,
and hubris and untested hope,
or vibrating with workaday buses—
twenty years ago I came to the city,
desperate for bigger dimensions,
for improbable twists and bright flavors.
I wanted to see windows with stone aprons,
broke-down pubs, and great glass boxes,
to find myself in the presence of poets,
schemers, wizards, rocket scientists
and other absurdities.
I wanted movement, uprising,
anthems of progress, fistfuls of sky—
nor have I forgotten the city as a table
where the world gathers round
(kimchi baklawa tamales akara),
twelve countries on every block,
with twelve children in every color,
ignoring the lesson of Babel,
inventing a common tongue,
but romance doesn’t pay my rent
and the city has become harder to love.
The cracks are bigger, the portions meaner,
the boots come marching round
whenever anthems are sung,
and the reality is,
or the reality has become
that chosen sons can climb quite high,
but the rest of Babel lives and dies
in the ever-growing shadow
of the glass boxes.