A light / text installation entitled "For 7 World Trade" by Jenny Holzer and James Carpenter

from Urban Convalescence by James Merrill

Out for a walk, after a week in bed,
I find them tearing up part of my block
And, chilled through, dazed and lonely, join the dozen
In meek attitudes, watching a huge crane
Fumble luxuriously in the filth of years.
Her jaws dribble rubble. An old man
Laughs and curses in her brain,
Bringing to mind the close of The White Goddess.

As usual in New York, everything is torn down
Before you have had time to care for it.
Head bowed, at the shrine of noise, let me try to recall
What building stood here. Was there a building at all?
I have lived here on the same street for a decade.

Wait. Yes. Vaguely a presence rises
Some five floors high, of shabby stone
—Or am I confusing it with another one
In another part of town, or of the world?—
And over its lintel into focus vaguely
Misted with blood (my eyes are shut)
A single garland sways, stone fruit, stone leaves,
Which years of grit had etched until it thrust
Roots down, even into the poor soil of my seeing.
When did the garland become part of me?
I ask myself, amused almost,
Then shiver once from head to toe,

Transfixed by a particular cheap engraving of garlands
Bought for a few francs long ago,
All calligraphic tendril and cross-hatched rondure,
Ten years ago, and crumpled up to stanch
Boughs dripping, whose white gestures filled a cab,
And thought of neither then nor since.
Also, to clasp them, the small, red-nailed hand
Of no one I can place. Wait. No. Her name, her features
Lie toppled underneath that year's fashions.
The words she must have spoken, setting her face
To fluttering like a veil, I cannot hear now.
Let alone understand.

So that I am already on the stair,
As it were, of where I lived,
When the whole structure shudders at my tread
And soundlessly collapses, filling
The air with motes of stone.
Onto the still erect building next door
Are pressed levels and hues—
Pocked rose, streaked greens, brown whites.
Who drained the pousse-cafe?
Wires and pipes, snapped off at the roots, quiver.

Well, that is what life does. I stare
A moment longer, so. And presently
The massive volume of the world.
Closes again.

Upon that book I swear
To abide by what it teaches:
Gospels of ugliness and waste,
Of towering voids, of soiled gusts,
Of a shrieking to be faced
Full into, eyes astream with cold—

With cold?
All right then. With self-knowledge.

Indoors at last, the pages of Time are apt
To open, and the illustrated mayor of New York,
Given a glimpse of how and where I work,
To note yet one more house that can be scrapped.

Unwillingly I picture
My walls weathering in the general view.
It is not even as though the new
Buildings did very much for architecture.

Suppose they did. The sickness of our time requires
That these as well be blasted in their prime.
You would think the simple fact of having lasted
Threatened our cities like mysterious fires.

There are certain phrases which to use in a poem
Is like rubbing silver with quicksilver. Bright
But facile, the glamour deadens overnight.
For instance, how “the sickness of our time”

Enhances, then debases, what I feel.
At my desk I swallow in a glass of water
No longer cordial, scarcely wet, a pill
They had told me not to take until much later.

With the result that back into my imagination
The city glides, like cities seen from the air,
Mere smoke and sparkle to the passenger
Having in mind another destination

Which now is not that honey-slow descent
Of the Champs-Elysees, her hand in his,
But the dull need to make some kind of house
Out of the life lived, out of the love spent.

Credits: Layered template (Cindy's Templates Set 43, Template 1) by Cindy Schneider, April Showers by Jane Shaver (Little Red Scraps) and Ale Parades (Madame Wing), April Showers Cardstock, April Showers Addon and Basic Alpha - Stunningly Silver by Jane Shaver (Little Red Scraps), Felt Sheets Pastel by Miss Tiina, Glass Styles by Holly McCaig and Glass Styles by me. Fonts are DJB Judy T by Darcy Baldwin.
Journalling reads: I really love this photograph of Nannie Freda and Joshua. I took it when he was staying with us for the weekend. Joshua looked so adorable in the outfit I had bought for him, I couldn’t resist getting out the camera and taking some photographs. I was able to capture this photograph of Joshua and Nannie Freda having a cuddle on the sofa. This photo is special, Nannie Freda never really liked to have her picture taken when she was alive. I used to have to take the odd one here and there when she wasn’t looking or she thought I was just snapping pictures of you or Josh or Hayley. I ended up with quite a collection of random pictures. None of them were great quality but they were better than nothing. When Nannie Freda died, almost everyone was worried that they didn’t have any photographs to remember her by. It took me a lot of time and effort to gether together everything I had, and fix them enough so they could be printed. Everyone was really greatful to have some photos to remember her with. It was the first time I have really appreciated how important taking photos really and truly is.