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2005-09-13 - 1:50 a.m.

On the internet I saw the list of people who died in 9/11 at the world Trade Center. The person posting asked readers to read the names and remember that day in silence. The first thing I did was to scan down to see if someone died who had my name.

Most alcoholics are perfectionists who fell off the tracks long ago. Except for the ones who have a chemical imbalance, low levels of GABA (Tom Cruise would beg to differ.) Hart Crane, a recovering alcoholic, managed to create some poems that are mighty tasty.

Here's one called Brooklyn Bridge

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest, The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him, Shedding white rings of tumult, building high Over the chained bay waters Liberty-

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes As apparitional as sails that cross Some page of figures to be filed away; -Till elevators drop us from our day...

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene Never disclosed, but hastened to again, Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced As though the sun took step of thee, yet left Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,-Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets, Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning, A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks, A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene; All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn...They cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews, They guerdon...Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise;
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choring strings!) Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge, Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,-

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars, Beading thy path-condense eternity: And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year...

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies'dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometimes sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

 

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