Enough Solitude, As It Is
Oct 11 2010


The sidewalk is wider here.
With spindly trees
sticking-up every 10 feet, or so
in a circle of meagre soil.
Which will never grow enough
for shade.
Because when their roots invade
water-pipes and cables
start buckling the pavement,
a crew of men
in hard-hats, and bright orange safety vests
will work their way down the street
in a cacophony of back-up beepers and chain-saws,
lopping them off
one-by-one.
A day’s work
and all the trees are gone.
While the men move on,
quenching their thirst
at quitting time.

People streaming by
on this downtown thoroughfare
have the 6th sense of city life,
slipping seamlessly past each other.
Distracted by phone calls
lugging packages
they never collide.
Like a school of silver fish
flicking left and right,
a flock of birds
veering suddenly,
they move with unconscious precision
collective purpose.

But no one notices the trees
with their stunted dusty leaves
struggling
in dry compacted soil.
Which were never meant to grow
as solitary ornaments,
so impoverished.
And isn’t there enough solitude
in the world
as it is?
So perhaps, this is all for the best.

And now
no one will ever object
to the loss of their magnificent shade trees.
When the city fathers decree
the street is inadequate,
and more men are dispatched
to jack-hammer the sidewalk
for traffic.


This poem started with “there is enough solitude, as it is”. It’s from Philip Roth, as quoted by interviewer John Barber in a newspaper interview on the occasion of his latest book. He was explaining why he had moved from his Connecticut acreage into a New York apartment: not just the rigors of age, but because his friends there had gradually been passing away, and that was solitude enough.

Which made me think he had arranged his life – in his austere apartment, writing compulsively – with just as much solitude. And also that cities, despite teeming with life, are paradoxically full of solitude – the easy anonymity, the isolation and alienation of metropolitan life. (Hardly a new trope for me!) So he hadn’t escaped his solitude at all; he had simply exchanged one kind of solitude for another. And his feverish writing, in a way, was/is an heroic effort to write his way out of it.

I think what happened was this line of thinking became conflated with an essay I recently heard (or was it something I read?): about mature urban trees being chopped down to make way for a road widening, the impotence of a local resident, and how this had impoverished both the physical and social landscape of this downtown neighbourhood. (Another familiar theme with me: trees!)

In this poem, the unnatural isolation of those pathetic and neglected urban trees becomes a metaphor for being lost in this mass of uncaring and self-involved people. And also a bit of a political commentary on short-sighted urban planning. In this sense, “city fathers” is somewhat ironic: they are hardly the caring stewards and protectors the name implies!

It kind of breaks the flow of the poem, but I wouldn’t change the closing lines of the 1st stanza. I wanted to convey the nonchalance, the lack of reverence for nature, the utter indifference of these disinterested men sent out to do just another day’s work. This is especially true in the context of a mature shade tree, which might be a century old. “All in a day’s work, and it’s gone”(to paraphrase myself) I think captures perfectly the quality of vandalism in such a destructive and irreversible act.