75.

The warehouses, spills, heaps, strews, broken waste

Crouch in the marshes across from Manhattan

The dead trees by the track I peer through

And squint as if I could see the natives

Watching Verrazzano from the shore

From marshes, beaches, woods as clean as trust

Under a blue sky. We are stalled in Secaucus

As far from Rouen, Avignon and Genoa

As Ulan Bator: the Indians are driven out

And the chain-link and leaning telephone poles

Tell little of my ancestor chased out of the Bronx —

And he died much later in Middletown —

Or of a beloved. In such dumping, scarring

Are songs false purity, virtual, askance?