Geoffrey Bartholomew - Manhattan Noir 2 - The Classics

Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!”

               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore—

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

               Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

               Shall be lifted — nevermore!

Chelsea

(Originally published in 1930)

If someone said, Escape,

let’s get away from here,

you’d see snow mountains thrown

against the sky,

cold, and you’d draw your breath and feel

air like cold water going through your veins,

but you’d be free, up so high,

or you’d see a row of girls dancing on a beach

with tropic trees and a warm moon

and warm air floating under your clothes

and through your hair.

Then you’d think of heaven

where there’s peace, away from here

and you’d go some place unreal

where everybody goes after something happens,

set up in the air, safe, a room in a hotel.

A brass bed, military hair brushes,

a couple of coats, trousers, maybe a dress

on a chair or draped on the floor.

This room is not on earth, feel the air,

warm like heaven and far away.

This is a place

where marriage nights are kept

and sometimes here you say, Hello

to a neat girl with you

and sometimes she laughs

because she thinks it’s funny to be sitting here

for no reason at all, except perhaps,

she likes you daddy.

Maybe this isn’t heaven but near

to something like it,

more like love coming up in elevators

and nothing to think about, except, O God,

you love her now and it makes no difference

if it isn’t spring. All seasons are warm

in the warm air

and the brass bed is always there.

If you’ve done something

and the cops get you afterwards, you

can’t remember the place again,

away from cops and streets—

it’s all unreal—

the warm air, a dream

that couldn’t save you now.

No one would care

to hear about it,

it would be heaven

far away, dark and no music,

not even a girl there.

It is not good to feel old

for time is heavy,

time is heavy

on a man’s brain,

thrusting him down,

gasping into the earth,

out of the way of the sun

and the rain.

Look at Isidore Lefkowitz,

biting his nails, telling how

he seduces Beautiful French Canadian

Five and Ten Cent Store Girls,

beautiful, by God, and how they cry

and moan, wrapping their arms

and legs around him

when he leaves them

saying:

Good bye,

good bye.

He feels old when he tells

these stories over and over,

(how the Beautiful Five and Ten Cent Store

Girls go crazy when he puts on

his clothes and is gone),

these old lies

that maybe nobody at all believes.

He feels old thinking how

once he gave five

dollars to a girl

who made him feel like other men

and wonders if she is still alive.

If he were a millionaire,

if he could spend five dollars now,

he could show them how

he was strong and handsome then,

better than other men.

But it is not good to feel old,

time is too heavy,

it gets a man

tired, tired

when he thinks how time wears

him down

and girls, milk-fed, white,

vanish with glorious smiling millionaires

in silver limousines.

When you’ve been through what I’ve been through

over in France where war was hell

and everything turned to blood and mud

and you get covered with blood and rain

and rain and mud

then you come back home again,

come back home and make good in business.

You don’t know how and you don’t know why;

it’s enough to make God stand still and wonder.

It’s something that makes you sit down and think

and you want to say something that’s clear and deep,

something that someone can understand:

that’s why I got to be confidential

and see things clear and say what I mean,

something that’s almost like a sermon,

O world without end,

amen.

When you can’t see things then you get like Nelly

and somebody has to put you out

and somebody has to put you away

but you can always see through Nelly.

She unrolled like a map on the office floor,

you could see her in the dark—

a blind pink cat

in the back seat of the Judge’s car.

But she’d get cold in the Globe Hotel,

singing songs like the Songs of Solomon,

making the Good Book sound immoral

then she’d say she was Mother Mary

and the strength of sin is the law.

World without end

amen.

Gentlemen, I had to fire Nelly,

she didn’t see when a man’s in business,

she didn’t know when a man’s a Christian

you can’t go singing the Songs of Solomon,

shouting Holy, holy, holy,

making Mother of Christ a whore,

cold as rain,

dead blood and rain like the goddam war,

cold as Nelly telling you hell you killed her baby,

then she couldn’t take a letter

but would sit down and cry

like rain.

It got so bad I couldn’t sleep

with her hair and eyes and breasts and belly

and arms around me

like rain, rain,

rain without end

amen.

I tell you gentlemen almighty God,

I didn’t kill her dead baby,

it was the rain

falling on men and girls and cities.

Ask the Judge (he’s got a girl)

about a baby:

a baby wants life and sun, not rain by God that’s death

when you float a baby down the sewer into the

East River with its lips

making foam at the stern of ships

head on for Liverpool in rain.

You can’t see what happens in rain

(only God knows, world without end)

maybe war, maybe a dead baby.

There’s no good when rain falls on a man;

I had to make it clear,

that’s what I wanted to explain.

East Village

(Originally published in 2001)

I sit alone here at night, listening