In Brooklyn Heights brownstone façades hold
an etched lie. I know, I know, pictures
lie : cropped, airbrushed, digitized. The frame
in being a frame excises time, motion.
Motion pictures lie more as we pan windows
and doors, turn onto the Promenade
to scale Manhattan’s fortress : horizontal, vertical
sprawl of glass and steel with its empty
space, twin sentinels excised, Lorca’s hueco
the absence, the ache the eye enacts
as it traces auras, silhouettes, certain synapses
still connected, rerouted each day.
Yet in the lie of human time a deeper shift
fails to register in the cityscape. Turn
away from the Empire State, forget
the bridge for a moment. Look south.
Helicopters halo Lady Liberty, spike
her torch. Ellis Island’s a pattern
of crenulated walls. Ferries and sailboats
slice through the brown river’s tiny
white caps. I see you’re drawn back
to the piers, the smaller buildings.
I know, I know; it’s hard to escape. Focus
on the bridge, then, its stone and wire.
It reaches out, solid and slight. Marin’s
bridge asserts itself in a purple arc,
color straddled with a hint of line. A boat’s
double masts puncture the bridge
like goal posts at the point where the platform’s
arc hits its height and cables dip
to the zero point. The masts echo the double
gothic arches, a lone tower’s eyes
and melt with the ship’s hull into purple
ripples. Yes. Another picture.
Another lie. Is it? Do you feel a eulogy
browning the façades? Do I speak as if
the bridge no longer exists? Rest assured
Brooklyn Bridge still fixes us with its
otherworldly stare. So what do I eulogize? Not
what you think. It’s there and not
there, what has passed from this world, what
rushes in to fill its space.
So what is it that makes something
not exist, even if it’s there?