David Lehman
THE DESIRE FOR STRANGE CITIES
1.
Each street means something other than it says.
On Haste Street in Berkeley, the temptation to amble
Down the hill, lazy as a guitar imitating the rain,
Is irresistible, and on Blake Street, a few blocks away,
The cross streets have names like 'Jerusalem" and "Thel,"
Or they should. Meanwhile, on 74th Street in Manhattan,
Between Amsterdam and Columbus, it shall always be 1974.
2.
Parlor game: in which city do you imagine yourself
And what do your imagine yourself doing
At the moment when, without warning or apology,
The world comes to an end? Variant: imagine
The circumstances of your own death. Assume,
No doubt erroneously, that death occurs only
When we have readied ourselves for it and that
We do this in our dreams. In the dream you have
All cities and all time zones to choose from.
, Where will it be - at an oyster stand near
The intersection of two broad boulevards in Paris,
A London club in 1850 or a Viennese coffee house
Fifty years later? A smoky upstairs bedroom in the Casbah?
Getting off a bus in Jerusalem, at night?
I saw myself
In Vienna, where I've never been, walking on a street
Much like the Rue Soufflot in Paris. I swear I saw
Lightning while the sun was out, and it gently rained.
3.
The traveler regaled us with stories, touching and true,
About the people he had met on his sojourns
In strange cities. Better yet were the stories
Edged with menace: the sense that something odd
