There is something enigmatic and endearing about the
East River. It is only about two-thirds of a mile wide, but looking out and overby from the Manhattan-side, one is struck with a keen sense of emergent pride. Brooklyn looks the business, while Queens means goodness. Apart from a couple of 'scrapers—with the emerald
CitiBank having the most modern taper—it's all lowdown, olde and urbanized; tunnelled, funnelled, if somehow resistent to enfranchise. Eyes draw to the sky, of course, but before that are wide apartments on the waterside, the land lie, and the burnt-out warehouse blocks. One's brow is roused and engaged by the unthreatening vertical yearnings of the chimneymen, the water towers, the dot-dot of cranes, all-about and around the everyman, in his Corven urban sprawl; from where only there, perhaps, are claps of built-up rage. In the foreground: that tidal strait, toling discreetly. She throes. The grace in her push-pull disguising a menacing toll. Her bed is cluttered, no doubt, with his jetsam, like a depth charge hold. But it's on-the-surface, with her jousting dance, open-hands, far-advanced above any burial ground cold; where uneven currents seem leeward-leaning, as if measured more to the
Fro: kissing forth comely, squarely, in the ceaseless round of a Delphian do-si-do.
