on. Sometime over Christmas Eve this 42 year old poetry editor at The New Republic took her life; her mother said she had become despondent after the loss of a three year love. What a tragedy and oh so sad...I have never grasped suicide - I have great empathy for those who have wrestled with it's lure and/or have made an attempt - but it has never been a part of my inner universe. It is just too foreign for my peculiar psyche. And I can't tell you exactly why Ms. Wetzteon's death had hit me so hard either; these days I rarely try to comprehend such things and mostly just let them wash over and through me. Here is one of her achingly beautiful poems about an area on the upper West Side of Manhattan that I know and still love.
Short Ode to Morningside Heights
Convergence of worlds, old stomping ground,
comfort me in my dark apartment
when my latest complaint shrinks my focus
to a point so small its hugely present
but barely there, and I fill the air
with all the spiteful words I spared the streets.
The pastry shop’s abuzz
with crazy George and filthy graffiti,
but the peacocks are strutting across the way
and the sumptuous cathedral gives
the open-air banter a reason to deepen:
build structures inside the mind, it tells
the languorous talkers, to rival the ones outside!
Things are and are not solid.
As Opera Night starts at Caffe Taci,
shapes hurry home with little red bags,
but do they watch the movies they hold
or do they forego movies for rooftops
where they catch Low’s floating dome in the act
of always being about to fly away?
Ranters, racers, help me remember
that the moon-faced fountain’s the work of many hands,
that people linger at Toast long after we’ve left.
And as two parks frame the neighborhood—
green framing gray and space calming clamor—
be for me, well-worn streets, a context
I can’t help carrying home, a night fugue
streaming over my one-note how, when, why.
Be the rain for my barren indoor cry.
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