To Emily Dickinson:

Me

In the beginning I was a square
I wanted to believe I’m a triangle
Other saw me as circle
I don’t care
But in the end
I want to be
A period
.

What’s real?

Reality is the absent of absolute
It is the recognition-
Of needs
Of belonging
Of love
But nether the less
It’s not the truth.

Virginity

Was cut- and stopped.

A Poem in Time, If I could I would have sent back in time this poem to Walt Whitman.

Crossing Manhattan Subway

1

Rolls of wheels below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds in the haze- sun there is it half an hour high?-I don’t see you, you still hide.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you
are to me!
On the station-trains the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home,
are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from bay to bay years hence are more to me,
And more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

2

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, wel-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one
Disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitude’s of the past and those of the future,
The glories strut like beads on my smallest sighs and hearing, on the walk in the street
and the passage under the city,
The current rushing so swiftly and electrifying with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the tie between me and them,
The certainty of others, the lives, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the subway and cross from bay to bay,
Others will read the news of the day,
Others will see the trains of Brooklyn to the south and the east, and the tunnels
of Manhattan to north and west
Others will see advertisement large and small;
Hundreds years hence, will others see them as they cross? the sun half an hour high-
Where is it still hiding?
A century year hence, or ever so many more hence, others won’t see
them anymore,
Will we enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the multitude, are we falling-back to the
sea of time.

3

It avails not, time nor place- distance avails not,
I am with you , you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
Generation hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the grimy walls, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was once of a crowd,
Just as you are refreshed by the opportunities of the new day, I
was refreshed,
just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with swift scent, I
stood yet was hurried,
just as you look on the numberless masts of tourist and the crowded people
I looked,

I too many and many a time crossed the tunnel of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month ruts, saw them down in the duck running
With motionless legs, oscillating their bodies, with the train vibe
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9

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I fathom them more- they love me not- there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity- no matter what,
Great or small, I try to furnish your parts toward the soul.