Derek Mahon:
The Hudson Letter
I.
Sometimes, from beyond the skyscrapers, the cry of a tug-boat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember this desert of iron and cement is an island.
– Albert Camus, American Journals,
tr. Hugh Levick
Winter; a short walk from the 10th St. Pier –
and what of the kick-start that should be here?
The fishy ice lies thick on Gansevoort
around the corner, and the snow shines bright
about your country house this morning: short
the time left to find the serenity
which for a lifetime has eluded me...
A rented ‘studio apartment’ in New York
five blocks from the river, time to think and work,
long-suffering friends and visitors, the bars
where Dylan Thomas spent his final hours,
God rest him; but there’s something missing here
in this autistic slammer, some restorative
laid like a magic wand on everything –
on bed, chair, desk and air-conditioner.
Oh, show me how to recover my lost nerve!
The radiators knock, whistle and sing.
I toss and turn and listen, when I wake,
to the first bird and the first garbage truck,
hearing the ‘lordly’ Hudson ‘hardly’ flow
to New York Harbour and the sea below.
The lights go out along the Jersey shore
and, as Manhattan faces east once more,
dawn’s early light on bridge and water-tower,
Respighi’s temperate nightingale on WQXR
pipes up though stronger stations throng the air –
a radio serendipity to illustrate
the resilience of our lyric appetite,
on tap in offices, lofts and desperate ‘hoods
to Lorca’s ‘urinating multitudes’
while I make coffee and listen for the news
at eight; but first the nightingale. Sing, Muse.
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