The Odd Woman and the City Read Online Free PDF Page B

1940s, Charles Reznikoff, a New York poet, walked the streets of his native city. Reznikoff was not a solitary—he was married, worked at a government agency, had literary friends—but the lucidity in his work comes from an inner silence so keen, so luminous, the reader cannot help feeling that he wandered because he needed some reminder of his own humanity that only the street could provide:
    I was walking along Forty-Second Street as night was falling.
    On the other side of the street was Bryant Park.
    Walking behind me were two men
    and I could hear some of their conversation:
    â€œWhat you must do,” one of them was saying to his companion,
    â€œis to decide on what you want to do
    â€œand then stick to it. Stick to it!
    â€œAnd you are sure to succeed finally.”
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    I turned to look at the speaker giving such good advice
    and was not surprised to see that he was old.
    But his companion
    to whom the advice was given so earnestly,
    was just as old;
    and just then the great clock on top of a building across the park
    began to shine.
    Time and again the drama of human beings sighting each other across the isolation unfolds for Reznikoff in the street:
    During the Second World War, I was going home one night
    along a street I seldom used. All the stores were closed
    except one—a small fruit store.
    An old Italian was inside to wait on customers.
    As I was paying him I saw that he was sad.
    â€œYou are sad,” I said to him. “What is troubling you?”
    â€œYes,” he said, “I am sad.” Then he added
    in the same monotone, not looking at me:
    â€œMy son left for the front today and I’ll never see him again.”
    â€œDon’t say that!” I said. “Of course you will!”
    â€œNo,” he answered. “I’ll never see him again.”
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    Afterwards, when the war was over,
    I found myself once more in that street
    and again it was late at night, dark and lonely;
    and again I saw the old man alone in the store.
    I bought some apples and looked closely at him:
    his thin wrinkled face was grim
    but not particularly sad. “How about your son?” I said.
    â€œDid he come back from the war?” “Yes,” he answered.
    â€œHe was not wounded?” “No. He is all right.”
    â€œThat’s fine,” I said. “Fine!”
    He took the bag of apples from my hands and groping inside
    took out one that had begun to rot
    and put in a good one instead.
    â€œHe came back at Christmas,” he added.
    â€œHow wonderful! That was wonderful!”
    â€œYes,” he said gently, “it was wonderful.”
    He took the bag of apples from my hands again
    and took out one of the smaller apples and put in a large one.
    I often wonder what Reznikoff’s poems would sound like were he walking the streets today.
    *   *   *
    â€œEvery man alone is sincere,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. “At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins … A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature.”
    *   *   *
    I had an affair with a downtown playwright. Two things about this man: He was an ex-alcoholic, and he was phobic about leaving the city. I was too old to think him poetic, but I did. He promised to remain sober, and he kept that promise. He promised to be faithful, but he didn’t keep that one. After he left me I suffered, in equal part, heartbreak and outrage. “You’re leaving me ?” I wailed. “I’m supposed to leave you !”
    An alcoholic, Leonard shrugged.
    An ex-alcoholic, I explained.
    I don’t care what kind of alcoholic, Leonard said.
    Now, we’re walking up Sixth Avenue in midtown and suddenly—I don’t know why, maybe I’m remembering the playwright—I recall a wonderful line of Frank O’Hara’s that I saw threaded in letters of steel along the marina balustrade in Battery Park City.