ETERNAL NEW YORK

I: A GRIEF OBSERVED

The horizon fading below the Atlantic’s gray waves

appears to tell only of stories past

because the sun glides over and away toward the west,

leaving the promise and prophecy of tomorrow

to a distant land.

Two tides divide the day:

the incoming high tide of hope

followed by the low tide of history.

Two opposing forces called unity

in their constant night in/out force

breaking against the shores of eternal New York.

I strolled carelessly

along the sidewalks of Manhattan Island

gently caressed by moon driven fingers

which reassured land bound voyagers

that the truth remains unchained forever.

With an intense longing,

I looked toward the burning torch outstretched

above the harbor and twinkling skyline

for a peace beyond my understanding.

Create in me a clean heart, Lord, I said.

One unbound by mistrust and fear of the dark horizon.

I’ve feared the past and the future,

yet I’ve heard a voice whisper gently

the joy you bring makes the trial sufficient.

Faces in Flames,

consumed with misinformed hatred,

who burned that cool September morning sky

in order to tear down the freedom gained

by the works of genius-filled man,

only succeeded in destroying their desecrated temples.

We fear.

We dread a fear below

lying beneath our exterior walls:

that fear itself makes our tragedy sure.

I asked of the voice one solemn request

contingent on the promise I would give:

renew a right spirit within my heart,

and I will rebuild the temple you built.

A covenant, seal it until the end.

In the last days,

even the fading young may receive a vision.

Far above the skyline,

a dark object circled lazily over the city.

A UFO, if only in the strictest linguistic sense, hovering

beyond the reach of the tallest metallic stalks

called the Great City’s manmade plain,

hinted at an ominous implication.

Joy seemed to float away with it,

by degrees higher and higher and more aloof

with each passing thought spent on grief.

Man is more himself, more manlike,

when joy the fundamental thing in him,

and grief the superficial.

Joy ascended alone can only mean the flight

of beauty from despair.

Beauty ascending with joy proclaims a holy matrimony

spoke the fat old owl alit on the abandoned car beside me.

I felt alone among the disengaged masses

walking along the cracked and split pavement.

They looked purposeless in their intent, head down stride

after stride in their dense muddled, marching columns.

Can comfort come in the finite distance

from eye to ground?

Or has the downtrodden face lost the strength to lift itself

upward to the infinite sky?

They no longer see the strength flying above them

spoke the old owl.

To know the difference between metaphor and the literal

may only mean the destruction of imagination.

We make a symbol of our forgotten reality

and thus reality becomes a Cross of grief.

The Cross must come before the crown.

I walked again to the harbor across from Lady Liberty

my insistent new companion following slightly behind.

I felt the eternity binding coolness of the same sea bursts

that our forefathers must have breathed in on breathless,

star adorned nights like this

when they stood between the crossed over ocean

of their past and the unmapped forest of their future.

A fled from past and a foreboding future untraveled

must have foreshadowed the coming age of struggle:

pain and glory followed by more pain and glory.

And now pain, and yet more glory to come?

A scream raced across the sky bent on the sunset

as the dot descended slightly, somehow

remaining far beyond the eye’s comprehension.

Watch, he said with a mournful, upward gaze,

how grief quits the strength of the wind.