Out of the angelic dark,
Carried by the flying thread of our better nature,
and up
without fear or surprise
past pink brick monuments
and river cranes like lilies,
the box truck, the excavator
a swarm of pigeons
and grafitti murals
vine and black stone
on the thunder of blasted cliffs
and staid retaining walls
girders in ivy valleys
shoulder lanes with high-vis yellow
laboring under bridge traffic
The chain-link, the gravel,
the brownstone and the streets and the faces,
A huge logo beside airy lots
Again the stone, the blasted walls,
the gravel and the grafitti
of names in a script,
like the nets holding back the boulders,
like the sheer of chain-link
There a green truss of a sky-flung bridge,
while ahead the train rounds a bend
around piles and mounds of ivy
Left- the Hudson has widened across
a dappled bank passing
barnacled ports and barges and again
right, through grime and the prints of the window
Ever on wind the cast-away halls
of ivy and stone and grafitti
and chain-link till passing,
occasionally, a low town of baked brick
and modern facade,
trainyards and trucks, warehouses (toppled urns of sand)
and gravel passing
or stopping
at green-painted platforms
with concrete that glows in the sun,
A tarp, a pile of ties, a fortress of windows,
up high a dining table past the ramparts of shattered slopes
Now little country homes here, red and tan,
A lot of beaten cars with dents and rust,
Shipping containers, avenues, past the river
an Irish cliff juts and ever on
and on, and so on, and on
rolls the train,
rolls the ivy, and gravel, and chain-link through
The marsh,
And the old Dutch courthouse,
The famous bridge, a shaded walkway,
A white blossom straining for the sun
Along comes the first stop.
