Grand Central Depot
Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt
raised you as a monument
to his empire, and why shouldn’t he.
From humble beginnings his art was
monopoly. He understood the art in craft,
it seems, for grand indeed you are. You
never belonged to him though, not
for a minute. You are touched by the handprints
of the thousands of souls who have built you:
ditch diggers and rock breakers, immigrants with picks,
sand-hogs and men off the reservation who walk in the wind.
Carpenters and engineers, plasterers and track men,
free men from the south and young men off farms
along the Erie Line from Chicago. You are oiled
with their sweat your memory holds their faces.
You have grown with progress, made adjustments.
In application you are a multi-chambered bellows,
you are the compressing and expanding cacophony of the accordionist,
you are the venturi effect. A pair of lungs. A beating heart;
pulling and pumping in all directions the flowing
blood-life of our nation. Beneath your dome of stars
you blanket the needy. Lovers rendezvous under your all-seeing
four-eyed clock: keeper of centuries with its secret
spiral staircase optical nerve. See’er of millions,
taking an imprint of each. Living. Breathing. Alive.
Copyright © Stephen Barry | Year Posted 2015
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