A poem for Henry Hudson
My father
lay in the arms of my mother,
my brothers entered the room, asked:
‘Are we in your way?’
pulled him to his feet,
gave him a good shaking, shouted:
‘We want to know now! Are we in your way?!’ –
but my father tore himself loose
and vanished in my mother –
philosophers rushed forward, searched for him in vain,
fumbled at the gates of life,
pulled answers out of their hats in desperation
and water fell on the barren heath and between the wild corn,
sparkled in the sun, enticed butterflies, wolves,
carved itself a path through pine forest and birches,
quenched the thirst of Indians, bears and deer,
wondered at the immense silence
of the world all around,
carried death and life and uncertainty along with it,
stumbled into chasms,
seethed with rage and pulled itself together again,
wrestled itself through cracks and crevices,
called out to the tiniest and most timid of brooks:
‘I am a river. Come with me!’
‘Where to?’
‘To the sea!’
‘To the sea?’
‘Yes, to the sea!’
saw the sea
and sighed the way only a river can sigh
out of immortality and melancholy,
nestled itself in the arms of a bay and slept –
until one day – ships sailed by
and the river awoke, opened its mouth wide,
cried: ‘Hudson! You! I have been waiting for you! I knew you would come!’
and Henry Hudson put his telescope to one eye
and called out to his sailors:
‘This is where we are meant to be!
This is the centre of the world.’
I went to the centre of the world,
I wanted to hear Thelonious Monk,
John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard
playing the first notes of ‘My Favourite Things’,
I wanted to go to Minton’s Playhouse on a Monday night
and hear Charlie Parker play ‘I Got Rhythm’, each time in a different key,
I wanted to see the Yankees, witness Casey Stengel come out of the dugout,
hear the Moose call for Moose Skowron,
see Mickey Mantle hit a first pitch into the bleachers –
I would never bet against them –
I wanted to see Roosevelt Grier, Sam Huff, Dick Modzelewski, Jim Katcavage and Andy
Robustelli
standing unshakeable on the goal line in Yankee Stadium,
the Rocky Mountains of my imagination,
I wanted to take the ferry to Staten Island for a nickel
and eat one of Nathan’s foot-long hotdogs on Coney Island,
with chilli, pickles and extra mustard,
I wanted to see the ferris wheel and walk along the boardwalk
like the father and mother of Delmore Schwartz in an irresponsible dream once,
I wanted to be a poet, make girls look at me in wonder,
run their hands through my hair,
wake up beside one of them, one morning, for the first time,
I wanted to walk where Jimmy Walker had walked
at the head of the Police Parade,
I wanted to let him know, my Jimmy, my hero,
that I would still love him in December,
even if it meant trudging through the snow,
I wanted to hear LaGuardia – O Fiorello, how I love you too! –
as he read the daily cartoons on the radio,
I wanted to think:
here Joe Louis, the ‘great brown bomber’, would saunter between two fights,
and here walked Ray Robinson in his sugar-pink coat, a girl on each arm,
I wanted to nod at Jack Dempsey through the window of his restaurant
and slowly, very slowly count to ten, without him noticing,
I wanted to sound a barbaric yawp over the roofs of Brooklyn, like Walt Whitman,
I wanted to close my eyes tight and cheer Lafayette in Fulton Street
and the GIs along Broadway in ’45,
I wanted to be in the centre of the world,
which was once in Voorstraat, at the corner of Asylstraat,
in a small town in Holland,
but had now changed places and was here –
I was just a boy, still wore the wrong clothes,
blushed each time someone asked me a question –
I wanted to see subways ride past, ‘whole cars’, ‘whole trains’
by Dondi, Lee, Rammellzee and Blade,
I wanted to know where e.e. cummings gave his capitals to the garbage man,
where Dutch Schultz drew his final breath with his head in his plate
and where on 15 June 1904 – the day before Bloomsday – the General Slocum went down
with more than a thousand children on board,
the greatest disaster in the ninety-seven years that followed,
I wanted to be here, stay here, far away
and yet nowhere so close
and morning came,
philosophers slept their hermetic sleep,
the sun came up
and my father crawled out of my mother,
became immense, grey and almighty,
stretched out his arms –
my brothers, my millions of brothers,
swarmed at his feet –
and he said:
‘No, you are not in my way.
You are never in my way,’
and my mother wept.
Poet's Note: 1. Thelonious Monk: jazz pianist (when I was still a student I would sometimes allow people to call me Theloon, after Monk, whom I admired more than any other jazz musician)
2. John Coltrane, saxophonist, played at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. My favourite song of his is ‘My Favourite Things’
3. Minton’s Playhouse: legendary jazz club in Harlem in the late thirties, early forties. ‘Bebop’ originated there – on Monday evenings everyone who believed they had talent could join in. Charlie Parker, the greatest of them all, started out there. Sometimes ‘I Got Rhythm’ would be played in different keys to test the skills of newcomers
4. Casey Stengel, legendary coach of the New York Yankees in the fifties and sixties, would come out of the dugout in a characteristic way to replace a pitcher
5. Bill Skowron, first baseman in those days, had the nickname ‘the Moose’ or ‘Moose Skowron’ because of the shape of his head. At the entrance to the stadium whistles were sold that made the sound of a moose. Whenever it was his turn to bat, everyone would blow these whistles, and then the ‘moose call’ would resound through the stadium
6. Mickey Mantle, the greatest batsman of the Yankees at that time, who scored many homeruns
7. bleachers: part of the stadium
8. For many years, the Yankees were almost invincible – there was an expression: ‘Never bet against the Yankees’
9. Roosevelt G., Jim K., Dick M., Andy R., and Sam H.: incredibly big, hefty and strong defenders of the New York Giants, the American football team of the city at that time
10. In the twenties a fierce battle was waged to keep the fare for the subway and the ferry to Staten Island at five cents – there was even a Five Cent Fare League
11. Nathan’s foot-long hotdogs in Coney Island are famous
12. There is a famous Ferris wheel on Coney Island and a boardwalk along the beach
13. Delmore Schwartz wrote ‘In dreams begin responsibilities’, a story in which, in a dream, his parents walk along the Coney Island boardwalk for the first time
14. Jimmy Walker: mayor of New York in the twenties. He loved show and always walked at the head of parades, such as the famous Police Parade
15. In 1965/66 I wrote a play about Jimmy Walker, together with a friend. That’s why Walker is my hero
16. Mayor Jimmy Walker was also a song writer. His most famous song is: ‘Will you love me in December as you did in May?’
17. Fiorello LaGuardia: a much loved mayor of New York in the thirties. When the New York newspapers went on strike, the children of New York were inconsolable because they missed their daily cartoons. LaGuardia decided to read them out on the radio every day for the duration of the strike
18. Joe Louis: heavyweight boxing world champion in the thirties and forties, whose nickname was ‘the great brown bomber’
19. Ray Robinson: middleweight boxing world champion in the fifties; a very handsome man, whose nickname was ‘Sugar Ray’. I once saw him in the street, near Times Square, wearing a pink fur coat
20. Jack Dempsey, heavyweight boxing world champion in the twenties. Later he owned a restaurant on Broadway, where he would often sit at the window. He lost a famous fight for the title against Gene Tunney, probably because the referee counted to ten too late and too slowly. To this day, the match is referred to as ‘the long count’
21. Walt Whitman lived in Brooklyn in his youth. One of his lines is: ‘I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world’
22. In 1825 Walt Whitman, in the arms of his mother, cheered on Lafayette in Fulton Street in Brooklyn. Lafayette was visiting America at the time
23. At the end of the war the American army was given a ticker tape parade along Broadway
24. Voorstraat and Asylstraat are two streets in Den Briel, where I spent the first twelve years of my life. On the way home from school – in the mornings and afternoons – I would often think, when I passed the corner of those two streets: now I am at the centre of the world, it is right here . . .
25. Dondi etc.: New York’s first great graffiti artists, who would cover whole compartments and sometimes whole subway trains with their paintings. In their jargon this was known as ‘a whole car’ and ‘a whole train’
26. e.e. cummings: a poet who never used capital letters in his poems
27. Dutch Schultz, a notorious gangster in the twenties and thirties. In 1935 he was shot in a restaurant and slumped down with his head in his plate. There is a famous photograph of this
28. The General Slocum was a large pleasure boat that caught fire and sank in the East River on 15 June 1904; there were 1300 people on board, many of whom were children, on a daytrip. 1020 people died, and until 11 September 2001 it was the greatest disaster that ever happened in New York
29. ‘Bloomsday’ is the day on which James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place: 16 June 1904. No book ever made a greater impression on me than this one, which I read in the spring of 1960 in America