Eli Siegel Poems

I —
Why?
...

Trees standing in rain;
Footfalls on the pavement, feet crushing leaves;
A little girl leaving her house;
The moon, barely to be seen, shining dully in the gray sky;
...

I
The subways, as usual, take emotions north and south.
When you are in a subway, emotion goes with you.
Emotion for thousands has come to a stop at Christopher Street, which is another name for Sheridan Square—
...

Brooklyn the gorgeous,
The southern Nineveh,
Where once on fields near an ocean not to be named now, prowlers, aborigines (Mr. Peckham) went about; and later not one of these got into learned books many of them now in Brooklyn by the Sound.
...

I
In love, you don't know what you're getting in Elizabeth, N.J.,
And you don't know what you're getting in Pottstown, Pa.
So why should New York be different?
...

The landlord's Heaven is where
There's a constant coming in of rent
And nothing at all is spent
On any repair.
...

When Sue Collins was a-courted a hundred years ago and more,
She was glad she was loved and she said,Yes, when Jim asked
her, Will you marry me?
The children of her children now live in New York, and one said
...

The discouraged
People were wedged
So closely together in the subway
You could take one discouraged person
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Noise near beaches,
'Mid July.
Scampering of thousands of humans who work in factories and
stores; and homes.
...

I
It was a dying sun, too.
The sun did not have the energy it had two hours ago, nor in some
days last June,
...