Remember Gens
How we walked that night
Swishing silks in the dark
Passing time
just before the chill set in
Any one of us
would have married you then
But we knew
that your bride was the life
and another bridge
came out of the fog and you walked to it
without a guide
And turned to stone in Union Square
And I married
The Gaslight
Your bells still ring loud
In the secret city
That lives beneath this hateful time
Dreamers all,
We voyage toward another New York
Smoking, sleepless
Your ghost whispers loud on the Bowery
and lifts my hem from the coal dust
that still dirties these streets
A century on
And black-bridled horses canter coachless
their master gone
Into the chimes
Into the smoke
Into
The Gaslight
Where it's noisy on the cobblestones
Tap your ivory skull-topped cane again
That sound,
it never leaves these streets, Gens
Walk with me again
They're calling you from the Lido shore
calling you to
The Gaslight
Walk with me again
Past pistol shots, the fancy-house,
brave sopranos bathed in
The Gaslight
Walk with me again
Into the chimes
Into the smoke
Into
The Gaslight
Chi Chi Valenti, 1994