It was 82 and humid the Sunday
before 9/11 when we walked
onto the crowded bridge from Brooklyn Heights.
Two teenage Latino-looking girls –
unsmiling, unsure, uneasy – were standing
by an insulated cart – no doubt
pushed up the walkway by some enterprising
dad or brother – filled with plastic bottles
of glistening water. The sellotaped price
was two dollars – but trade was measured
despite the weather. A guarded city
even in diversity? I thought of Hart Crane’s
‘Migrations that must need void memory,
Inventions that cobblestone the heart’,
crossing to Manhattan.
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By David Selzer