by Eugene Sotirescu
A sulking city withholds its sleet
the best it can, stretching street against street
in a defensive gesture of ordered life.
I start out from Washington Square
with its predictable patterns of grass and brick,
hot dogs and history.
I start from Independence Mall,
where the guides' eternal chatter exorcises
the founding darkness seeping from the bell's crack
(here is another chance,
another poke at the page to make it shiver
with the well-known vibrato that holds the center
but denotes digression - in Northern Liberties
the winds read the graffiti,
snow flakes catch in the razor wire,
light falls untidy along dim trails of motion)
I start from the spot on Delaware Avenue where stone
shoots metal over the river and Penn landed,
from 39th and Chestnut, where I landed
with pebbles in my mouth and saw myself
in the wet shimmer of the street: I was
the clear self of the trembling radiance
that rims the spotlight in which
a trumpet is lowered in the great American music hall -
I bowed down deeply and swallowed
the lucky, singing stones of the city.