Mannahatta
My Rosemary and I are shortly going to New York City for a week and by sheer coincidence I was reading Jorge Luís Borges’s Prólogo de prólogos. In it he has a forward for Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Astoundingly his forward is to a translation of the work into Spanish by Borges himself. What this means is that in our flight to Newark I will be reading a VPL copy of the work. Why exactly? Because Whitman lived in Brooklyn and wrote extensively about the island of Manhattan. And when I come back I will be ordering the Borges edition from Abe Books.
Mannahatta
Walt Whitman, 1819–1892
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane,
unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays,
superb,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and
steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender,
strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining
islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters,
the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the
houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-
brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses,
the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing
clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the
river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or
ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d,
beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the
shops and shows,
A million people — manners free and superb — open voices —
hospitality — the most courageous and friendly young
men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!
Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.
