poem, 2/17/10, 9:44pm
It seems strange to be posting this now, I guess, since we just moved to Tulsa, and are not in New York City anymore. But that city is now a beloved part of me, and I just found this poem while going through papers from last year, and thought it was worthy of being posted. I have to admit, I don't understand all of it myself, so I think it would be funny if someone else starts making sense of it and giving me all kinds of artistic credit. Ha! I'd be curious to see the interpretation. But for now, I'm just gonna put it out there.
Enjoy.
I sing a song of New York City,
Glittering world of all that's pretty
And all that's left behind.
I love your walls of steely glass
And the people that make you turn and ask,
"How did you come to be here so?"
As the Spirit moves in the way to go.
My pen is your ink
Makes me stop & think
Of the world moving faster
than time began.
The language of tongues
tripping, falling from lungs
breathing air that our forefathers breathed.
A stream of lost souls,
some made into pure gold
By the maker of Brooklyn and Queens and Manhattan
and the northerly Bronx and that island called Staten.
I love all your people, Lord,
teeming with life
And dancing the dance of the city of strife.
Let your tongue rule my tongue
'til this play's just begun
and we swim to the cross
and the victory's won.
BRING YOUR KINGDOM, LORD, TO THIS:
my city. (picture two doodles of buildings here, drawn next to the scrawling words, "my city.")
*The above photo--and, in fact, all previous photos on this blog--taken by Elizabeth Bernhardt (me). Can I now say that I am a photojournalist...?
Correction: the photo on the last blog post was taken, I think, by my mother, in 1984. (Ooh! It's like that John Mayer song!)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes...I realize that the picture on this post is blurry. And I can take better photos than that. But I chose this one because I took it on my cell phone as I was walking across 32nd Street, and came to this corner, and BAM! There was the Empire State Building! And out of me came words to this beloved icon of my beloved city: "Hello, goijus." And I just had to take a picture.
So, I chose the above picture because it has personal meaning to me, kind of like a diary entry in itself. And you know what? On the small screen of my cell phone, it looked beautiful! And that's how I remember it. This picture is part of my New York story.
Correction on the correction:
ReplyDelete1983 is the year John Mayer sings about.
1984 is the creepy, fascinating futuristic book George Orwell.