A Poem in Luxembourgish on New York

By Pierre Joris

Because to speak, to speak like one's mother, means to dwell, even there where there are no tents.
— Paul Celan (translated here by the author)

It wasn’t even around Pentecost
      and nothing was flowering
      but it was an overheated day
      mid-February & mid-town
      when twixt Anselm Kiefer at the Breuer-Met
      & Wagner’s Parsifal at the Met-Opera
      I sat down in the middle of Central Park
      on a bench exactly twixt those two Euro-Kulchural affairs
      to write this poem.
 
(Don’t buy that hotdog, nor any of those
      nuts, too much sugar in both, but)
      look
      at that white horse, that nag
      makes no mistakes.
      it eats its oats
      and works through this heat,
      head bowed, gemütlich
      it shows New York
      to the tourists much better
      than I could.
 
And the horse is neither sad-sack nor amused, like any
      thing or person pulling some form of transport
      conundrum through New York,
      it or he or she’s smilingly sullen
      or sullenly smiling & about ready to nap.
 
I nod to the nag which doesn’t
      nod back, busy as it is to rhythmically
      nod its head following its heavy trot.
 
And I keep nodding, body/mind
      caught in rhythm of horse’s
      nod, the clop-clop of its hoofs
      and, a hundred meters to the right,
      the quick nervous bang-bang of jazz drums
 
it’s all one
      gorgeous
      rhythmic mess,
              it is the beat-
      ing heart of New York, & thus the true
          heartbeat of
      America—
                even if I am—
      no, not caught, but—strolling, or
      sitting in the sun
      between two Euro-references,
      but in the middle of the heat of this city
      I fell
      in love with exactly fifty years
      & seven months ago
      even if not always faithful—
 
                —& now I need
      a table & a cup-a-coffee—a question: the waitress’
      head raises—“straight up”
 
      I say—
      then sit down
          right in the window of the
      European Café
              (a name & a place
              does not translate into
                    Café Europe my old hangout on the Plëss)
 
      there where
      Columbus & Broadway
      intersect &
      now bring
      this poem to
      a close.

Copyright Credit: Pierre Joris, "A Poem in Luxembourgish on New York" from Interglacial Narrows: Homage to Celan.  Copyright © 2023 by Pierre Joris.  Reprinted by permission of Pierre Joris Literary Estate.
Source: Interglacial Narrows: Homage to Celan (Contra Mundum, 2023)