Thursday, December 6, 2007

Now and Then

NOW AND THEN
BY ELIZABETH SOUTHWOOD

We're in a taxi
heading up Park Avenue.
We used to take the subway
in a crush
of others pressing
up against us.
Today we're briefly
here where
we lived a year,
some years ago.
We were so young,
it's been so long,
the folks here then
are mostly gone.
New York is full of strangers
with smooth faces.
These new young sprint
across the street
on sneakered feet,
bright-eyed, joking,
while we,
although exhilarated
by our trip,
stare intently,
palimpsesting
past with present.

When the dark-haired, bony
driver speaks,
then shrugs, parks, and points to
where we're going,
we struggle stiffly

from the taxi.
Our fate has mostly
come and gone.
We enter
the museum.

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