Verse
Today in the taxi I picked up a woman with a little girl, maybe 5 or 6, on West 91st going to West 68th Street. When they got in I said “She should wear a seat belt please” and she said “Seat belts aren’t safe for kids her age.”
I’m a safe driver, but in a crash, whatever isn’t strapped down will continue flying forward at whatever speed the car was traveling.
I imagined fears of the apocalypse: yellow ants and bacteria coming from the icecaps. All will suffer. Who knows what danger we may have encountered had they worn seatbelts.
Once it was claimed that the prophets can command things not in accord with the Law. An old rabbi called it “a commandment which is fulfilled by means of a transgression.” They opened the door and went on their way.
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Oar and Petals
Today in the taxi I was at Hart Crane’s apartment at 79 Charles Street. I imagined him in his sailor’s top and seersucker pants, turning the doorknob, eyes glazed with distance.
There was this shapeless, orange, end-of-day rushing. Then I had a pause at his apartment house, as if we could be wrapped to keep from getting stiff. Crane prepared his writing, but nothing happened.
I thought of the Lord having to swab the deck of the Orizaba with a mop, or She was flying over him like silver teeth when he fell off. She can see the current is too strong, and the life preservers too far, but now She is below deck, obviously, and maybe he wants to not swim more than he wants to swim.
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Backs and Necks
Today in the taxi I brought two women from Eldridge Street near Delancey Street to someplace in Staten Island, at the end of Hylan Boulevard near the water. Then they asked me to wait while they had their meeting. I parked by the Narrows. I could see the skyline and the Upper Bay.
The air moved across the miles bearlike in the atmosphere; the pale-cherry tissue of darkness and the little alleys on make-believe streets. From there you can feel the plasma of waves.
Driving a cab all day ruins the car and it ruins my body. My brain moves away from my body’s stagnate husks. I think of the old jazz pianists who died young— Wade Legge of a stomach ulcer or Clyde Hart of tb — their sour stench of liquid through a channel.
I watched the seabirds swirl and dive into black water, in knots and roseate oars. Marrow’s semi-solid and yellow, moving as we move.
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Take Hold of It
Tomorrow in the taxi it will be another day. I’ll read the book twice, then lend it out for someone else to read quickly, then I’ll read it again.
When a prophet asked the Lord about what the book meant, She said: “Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it.”
I pictured the black fire of Her ink and the white fire of Her parchment, everything far-reaching. Among the blur of noise and chaos of the demonic coming from the city’s every window, She commented: “Be silent, for this is the way I have determined it.”