ManicDDaily

Opening of "Somewhere", Music by Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

A certain damp dullness hangs over the subway car this morning, the Number 5, Lexington Avenue express.  We diversified New Yorkers are unified here, in our experience of rain-moistened Monday fatigue.  The hems of our pants are limp.  More than half of our eyes are closed.  (By this, I mean, both of the eyes on more than one half of the passengers.)   The guy next to me has a uniquely beady intensity;  he definitely stares at something.  But when I follow his gaze, I find the blank window on the other side of the car.  I notice then too that the corner of his baseball cap also actual drips whole gobs of unheeded moisture, so I’d just as soon not vouch for his alertness.

The girl opposite also has both eyes open, but her mouth is open too.  The movement of her tongue can be seen under her lips, the skin of chin and cheeks; she appears to search the insides of her mouth, though she is not eating, nor is she noticeably carrying food.  These factors tend to put into question her “on-top-of-things-ness.”

The only person who can truly qualify as “engaged” is a tall young African-American man who reads the Daily News analysis of the collapse of the Jets.  So, engaged, yes, but not exactly cheerful.

Seriously.  What shines here is not a single “morning face”, but only the wet spots on the train’s dark linoleum floor shine, and an occasional crumple of cellophane.

All this makes me think that it’s really too bad I wasn’t on the local;  the No. 6 specifically, leaving from Spring Street.  I used to take that train frequently and noticed that a curious configuration of curve and track caused it to sound out a specific musical interval each time it left the platform.   Although it’s an East Side train, the interval corresponds to one  of the song openings from West Side Story. (Which brings up a completely different kind of Jets.)

So, in honor of those three notes, I set forth below a kind of silly, kind of “Shakespearean” sonnet:

Subway Song

The subway sings its broken refrain,
the opening bars of “There’s a Place
For Us” from West Side Story.  The train
croons the first three notes leaving the dais
of the platform, the tune subsiding
to squeak and wind and roar as train races
to a-harmonic levels, providing
speed without Bernsteinian traces,
those tragic lovers defiant of fate
and enmity. Yet, at every station,
they sing again.  Who of those who wait
hear the song of that yearned-for destination,
that lyrical place, beyond how, beyond where,
amazed that the Six Train nearly takes them there?

I am linking this post to Victoria C. Slotto’s Liv2write2day blog, for her prompt on Sacred Music.  The sounds of the Number 6 are not exactly sacred, but they are pretty lovely when you are standing in a grey tunnel.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

For a more serious subway sonnet, click here.

P.S.  No copyright infringement of “Somewhere” intended, beautiful song.  (Btw, I haven’t noticed that any credit is given to Bernstein by the IRT.)

This entry was posted on January 25, 2010 at 9:42 pm and is filed under New York City, poetry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: "Somewhere" Stephen Sondheim, "There's a Place For Us" Refrain on the subway, blogging on train, cool sonnet, interval from West Side Story, January subway doldrums, Jets on Subway, Karin Gustafson poetry, Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein subway sonnet, manicddaily, music of Number 6 Train, shakespearean form sonnet, silly subway sonnet, song of the subway as it leaves platform, subway blog, Subway sonnet blog