16
PARTISAN REVIEW
Those Autobiographical Blues
I think every day of the city where I was a boy-
I remember all of it, too: not only the river road
Flanked with autumnal color nor gold-leafed water
Nor the slow hills around, nor the smoke of thin spring-
That was after the war; money was easy, and everyone
Kept up his lawn in summer evenings and went
For a ride in the new car and was mostly young-even
The Armenian and Italian shoecutters got fur coats
And the Jews were buying up Main Street while the Yankees
Moved over a block or two, I remember; and the first to have
Radios-the Irish-bought big ones on installments.
The noise of things broken on the air began then
And in the daylight-saving we kids sat under neighbors' windows
To listen to the crackling notes of speech or jazz; and 'static', we said,
Sucking grass or wrestling, or watching the fireflies
Bewildered over the new cellar holes in the near fields.
I remember the bare bottoms of the kids I knew-
How they used to ·plunge and disappear and bounce up
Shining in the brown river in the afternoons, even until
The leaves were coming down brown and gold-O Christ, yes!
And that was not longer than ten-fifteen years ago
Before everything began to close up: the factories shut,
Houses unpainted along the frost-split streets and no
Macadam nor paint thought of, with clothes themselves junk;
Mr. Forrester shot himself at the Bank; Benny Goldstein
Lost his apartment houses; the store took back the Armenians'
Rugs and furniture; the Italians moved on with the shops; the
Irish got on relief, and the Yankees voted for Hoover.
