New York: You take a train that rips through versts. <br />It feels as if the trains were running over your ears. <br /> <br />For many hours the train flies along the banks <br />of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops, <br />passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery, <br />and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go. <br /> <br />Bridges leap over the train with increasing frequency. <br /> <br />At each stop an additional story grows <br />onto the roofs. Finally houses with squares <br />and dots of windows rise up. No matter how far <br />you throw back your head, there are no tops. <br /> <br />Time and again, the telegraph poles are made <br />of wood. Maybe it only seems that way. <br /> <br />In the narrow canyons between the buildings, a sort <br />of adventurer-wind howls and runs away <br />along the versts of the ten avenues. Below <br />flows a solid human mass. Only their yellow <br />waterproof slickers hiss like samovars and blaze. <br />The construction rises and with it the crane, as if <br />the building were being lifted up off the ground <br />by its pigtail. It is hard to take it seriously. <br /> <br />The buildings are glowing with electricity; their evenly <br />cut-out windows are like a stencil. Under awnings <br />the papers lie in heaps, delivered by trucks. <br />It is impossible to tear oneself away from this spectacle. <br /> <br />At midnight those leaving the theaters drink a last soda. <br />Puddles of rain stand cooling. Poor people scavenge <br />bones. In all directions is a labyrinth of trains <br />suffocated by vaults. There is no hope, your eyes <br />are not accustomed to seeing such things. <br /> <br />They are starting to evolve an American gait out <br />of the cautious steps of the Indians on the paths of empty <br />Manhattan. Maybe it only seems that way. <br /> <br /> <br />Anonymous submission.<br /><br />Annie Dillard<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mayakovsky-in-new-york-a-found-poem/
