Clotheslines and Stick-Ball
April 19 2023
The dark tenements
and narrow streets.
Congested
with hawkers' stalls
jeek-by-jowl,
kids playing stick-ball,
swayback nags
hauling wooden carts
with second-hand goods.
A welter of clotheslines
are strung between the tenements
like telegraph wires,
carrying the news
by way of stretched long johns
that wash-after-wash
has mostly left threadbare,
dress shirts
with detachable collars.
Old lady lingerie
grey with age,
and baby clothes
saved from the dead.
I look at the old pictures
in black and white
and think how things have changed.
How today's New York City
is bright and airy and clean.
How in Central Park
the grass has greened
under a blue spring sky.
How people play and jog
and take in the sun,
while a jazz trio
is noodling around
with Mingus and Monk.
A chestnut horse trots by,
coat shiny
head high.
It pulls a fairy-tale carriage
with tourists inside
gawking at the scenery.
And taking the tenements' place
— thankfully condemned
and long ago demolished —
is prime real estate.
While the clotheslines are history,
replaced
by fast fashion
and laundromats.
And the kids
who once owned the streets
swiping apples from the cart
when the peddler's back was turned,
or playing stick ball
and trading marbles,
are sitting in airy apartments
glued to colour screens.
As soon as I saw that familiar image, I immediately thought of how quickly and dramatically things have changed; how we take for granted our good fortune in being born when we were; and the intangible things — the social trust and sense of community — we give up as we gain in material wealth.
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