It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder, Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shouldering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky in an instant -- and the sky above -- an old blue place.
or down the Avenue to the south, to -- as I walk toward the Lower East Side -- where you walked 50 years ago, little girl -- from Russia, eating the first poisonous tomatoes of America -- frightened on the dock --
then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what? -- toward Newark --
toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards --
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school, and learning to be mad, in a dream -- what is this life?