FREDERICK FEIRSTEIN
259
And I can't mourn her, though I mourned the rest
Who died in clumps like those who disappeared,
And when she fell down dead I got depressed
And lost myself in clouds of childhood fears.
The vase is calm in motion, glazed like hope
Covers me blindly with these simple themes,
Mother and child who will not have to cope
With what's beyond the realm of quiet dreams.
For months after finishing the fifty-page sequence, I was uneasy,
knowing I would have to go beyond the narratives of my own life his–
tory and dramatize
9/II's
impact on my beloved city. I had celebrated
Manhattan exuberantly in
Manhattan Carnival: A Dramatic Mono–
logue.
Now, of course, the city had changed, its joyous mood darkened
by the clouds of
9/II.
SO I began
to
write a sequel,
Dark Carnival: A
Dramatic Monologue
searching along with my leading character for
light and hope.
In
Manhattan Carnival,
Mark Stern wakes up after an awful one–
night stand to search for his estranged wife Marlene. He goes on a
comedic episodic journey through
I970S
Manhattan, the form couplets
underscoring Mark's attempt
to
reunite with Marlene. Being a comedy,
this dramatic poem ends with Mark and Marlene dancing to the song
Yesterday
and then, with rising couplets drawn in parallel, coupling to
make a child.
So now in the Fall of
2002,
thirty years later, Mark Stern wakes up
again. Bleary-eyed, in the
Dark Carnival
of a changed Manhattan, he
says to himself:
"Get up, Mark Stern, it's summer, spring, it's fall,
And winter's coming fast; the caterwauling-
Ing geese, heading for Miami Beach
Fly in a V, perfectly out of reach,
As Jack, twirling bacon on a fork,
Called on his cell phone-then flew from New York
Over New Jersey, south
to
God knows where,
A soul in freedom, once a millionaire
Broker with Morgan Stanley, handsome Jack,
Sensitive Jack. Mourning won't bring him back."
