Poem

Not the road to Damascus, but on the number four local
bound for Grand Central a revelation—not earthshaking,
not of holy Jehovah rung by heavenly hosts, not of Truth
in neon letters, nor of love transcendent.
Nor of the miraculous perfection of all and everything.
Not even of humanity, that abstract beast, its long-
suffering dignity, its workaday heroism,

but of men and women only. Not beautiful, not happy,
bled by the leech of thought, tunneling their own private
labyrinths, yet seen today blazing, not like the sun,
but like themselves. Each one a world—

a glass-bottomed boat
windowed to the bottom of the sea
where a star shines, another sun.

The subway was still the subway, and I
no desert anchorite beheld no Giotto frieze of sages
striking poses—but straphangers only hanging on—
just barely. Faces as furrowed as the dark side of the moon,
but flared at the edges like eclipsed suns.

Tired mama chained to shopping bags,
walkmaned bopper drumming stone-washed jeans,
tyke twirling like a dervish, and myself,
wide-eyed as an anthropologist from another planet.
All on fire. All fire lit from the only flame
there is. Flame of no name—call it Life—

distraught, distracted, missing in action. But also living.
That’s the point. Not lodged like stones in earth. Not glowing
like a Greek torso. Not saints interred in their own halos.
But each a work in progress and in transit

heading somewhere, anywhere: to shop, to work.
Or home after the daily slugfest at the office.
So many journeys, but all packed in the same
arbitrary canister—that’s the odd part—not glancing up
from our newspapers or our lives at those
whom the winds of the world have spun
for a stop or two together. Then each
heading up the stairway, and into the light
of the One Day.

Richard Schiffman lives in New York City.