Afternoon in Manhattan - Nan Fuchs

[Larry Robinson]

Afternoon in Manhattan

Once upon a book
We walked through your Manhattan
While smoke-scented air
Drew cool in our nostrils
We strolled its wasted streets.

Your hand held mine
And I looked into your face –
“There is a man” you whispered to me,
Pointing with your voice
“With all he owns in that paper sack.”
And I knew you knew, but never how.

We paused before a new brick house
Pressed between buildings of crumbling stone.
“There,” you spoke “is where your great uncle lived,
“But his building was old and torn down.”
And I thought I felt your clear eyes cry
For the lost bricks
For those lost dead bricks that you loved.

On we walked
Through the yellowfaced streets of Chinatown
My Chinatown
With paper fans and parasols
And the odor of food spelling CHOW MEIN 
In capital letters in the narrow streets.

All that afternoon we were filled with each other
No street looked dirty,
No building old and worn.
All we knew were each other’s joys
Which mingled with our own.
Then, laughing together we rode the slow train home.

	- Nan Fuchs
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