Summer Ale (Hanover Square, July 2008)

Fast Sam Adams laughter
Reverberates through Harry’s
At the government’s insistence
That it can trace and displace rumors
Or measure credit derivatives.
Have the business schools produced
The most morbid and inept
Cheerless executives
In this short crisis?

Tourists continue to perspire
Along the perimeter
Of Ground Zero.
Incapable or unable,
They do not see or hear
The ghosts suspended
Above Tobin Plaza,
The Court of International Trade,
Always about to splatter
On rookies, chiefs and a priest
Staring up in disbelief.

Instructed to shop
By the first MBA president,
Those who are not New Yorkers
Herd towards Century 21
And emerge moist and ravenous.

Shamans once dispatched warriors
To the Underworld
To free the maimed and the dead
Of their dying civilizations.
We lease.

After another draft,
Some casual remarks and a casual caress,
My colleague from Deutsche Bank
Finally laughs.
At last, the mayhem—
Of falling towers, broken levees and
Continuous crimes committed by
The drug-addled underclass—
Gives way to Johan Santana’s
First complete game at Shea.

Short the ultra-short ETFs and
Watch millions reappear intraday.
Magic. Levity.
Fueling another round
In this swell town.

The Freedom Tower

Long after Schumer, Clinton and Pataki
Are relegated to storage, their images
Yellowed and curled like old site maps,
Others may continue to chatter about
The Freedom Tower as a symbol of
Urban and national resistance to terror.
I would sooner trust the judgment of
My fellow New Yorkers: None would work
Anywhere near that plated fixation—
1776 feet of dire steel, glass and concrete;
As if New York needed to reassure
The Baathists, Bedouin, French or Germans
That we live in the center of the universe
At the apex of all known civilizations.

The Negro’s Civil War
(for Sean Bell)

The focus, of course, is on Colonel Shaw
Buried in the ditch before Battery Wagner
With his slaughtered Negro soldiers.
The Massachusetts Fifty-fourth had suffered
More losses than the Confederacy
That fateful fiery morning.
Loss always seems to come
With a sunrise to remember.
The Comedian wills everything.

The mad Brahmin poet Robert Lowell
(Perhaps the best and the brightest
Of the last half-century)
Re-reported the loss.
Many were urged onto Boston Common,
Opposite the old Statehouse,
Towards Saint Gaudens’ bas-relief
Of Shaw and his gaunt soldiers.

Art is a wondrous concession
To those prescient illustrious Fools
Buried at Copps Hill and along
The estuaries that once fed these
Nieuw cities of fire and brimstone
And lumbering merchants.

Later, a film, Glory, also returned
To that first Negro regiment
Recruited in the North:
Soldiers (and their lily officers)
Paid unequal wages, expended
(Some suggest) in South Carolina
To shore up support for the war.

Historians press primary documents
For evidence of their understanding.
I hear the slaughter of Negros in the North:
Christians hunting other Christians.
A fusillade still pouring upon the sons
Of Douglas and Washington.

© Copyright Eugene Schlanger, 2008 - All Rights Reserved - Tous droits réservés

Summer Ale (Hanover Square, July 2008)

by Eugene Schlanger, the author of September 11 Wall Street Sonnets (Paris 2006)

Fast Sam Adams laughter
Reverberates through Harry’s
At the government’s insistence
That it can trace and displace rumors
Or measure credit derivatives.
Have the business schools produced
The most morbid and inept
Cheerless executives
In this short crisis?

Tourists continue to perspire
Along the perimeter
Of Ground Zero.
Incapable or unable,
They do not see or hear
The ghosts suspended
Above Tobin Plaza,
The Court of International Trade,
Always about to splatter
On rookies, chiefs and a priest
Staring up in disbelief.

Instructed to shop
By the first MBA president,
Those who are not New Yorkers
Herd towards Century 21
And emerge moist and ravenous.

Shamans once dispatched warriors
To the Underworld
To free the maimed and the dead
Of their dying civilizations.
We lease.

After another draft,
Some casual remarks and a casual caress,
My colleague from Deutsche Bank
Finally laughs.
At last, the mayhem—
Of falling towers, broken levees and
Continuous crimes committed by
The drug-addled underclass—
Gives way to Johan Santana’s
First complete game at Shea.

Short the ultra-short ETFs and
Watch millions reappear intraday.
Magic. Levity.
Fueling another round
In this swell town.

© Copyright Eugene Schlanger, 2008 - All Rights Reserved - Tous droits réservés