It's the last day of the snowiest February in twenty years, we're still in the middle of the worst economy in at least ten, and no relief is in sight. This winter would have been much harder without dirt-cheap lunch-time Rx: The sinus-clearing $4 bowl of pho at Pho Bang, 3 Pike St, just above Canal. For shrimp pho, try the place on East Broadway (Pho 89?) just uptown of the Manhattan bridge. Neither is new, both are effective.

From the Everyman Library collection Poems of New York:

    Whitman in Black

    For my sins I live in the city of New York
    Whitman's city lived in Melville's senses, urban inferno
    Where love can stay only for a minute
    Then has to go, to get some work done
    Here the detective and the small-time criminal are one
    & tho the cases get solved the machine continues to run
    Big Town will wear you down
    But it's only here you can turn around 360 degrees
    And everything is clear from here at the center
    To every point along the circle of horizon
    Here you can see for miles & miles & miles
    Be born again daily, die nightly for a change of style
    Hear clearly here; see with affection; bleakly cultivate compassion
    Whitman's walk unchanged after its fashion

-- Ted Berrigan (1994)


- bruno 2-28-2003 9:41 pm




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