Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, dusk and sunset, with literary interlude

Sigh. The things you see when you’ve only got your not-particularly-great Blackberry Bold picture-taking capa­city. Friday night they had to close down the Red Hook pool—some not-too-bright mom put an infant wear­ing a soggy diaper that leaks in the water, which then required chan­ging (the water, that is; the diaper too, I guess, but that was­n’t much my concern)—so for my late after­noon swim I thought I’d go to the Sunset Park Rec Center, over on 43^rd and Seventh Ave., which would put me reas­on­ably close to the Bay Ridge Grand Sichuan, scene of a famed whose-tolerance-for-heat-is-greater face-off between Village Voice food writer Robert Sietsema and Dr. John, where I’d stop for din­ner. Crossing Fifth Avenue on my way to the R sta­tion after the swim, I was struck by the golden light reflect­ing off the inner arch of the Verrazano Bridge, and all I got was this lousy street scene shot…

Getting closer to the Bridge—87^th Street, now in Bay Ridge, now in near dark—didn’t yield sub­stant­ively bet­ter inner-arch light res­ults, but for some reas­on I like the image…

Next time I head that way I’ll have to bring a real cam­era, maybe. I had the ox tongue and tripe in pep­pery sauce appet­izer—inter­est­ing textures—and of course the insane Ching Qing chick­en. My Lovely Wife could not join, as she had an after-work social­iz­ing appoint­ment, but we got to have quite a lot of oth­er yummy if not quite as feel-the-burn style food dur­ing the rest of the lovely Labor Day weekend. 

Odd and apt, on the week­end when I was get­ting in my last laps at Brooklyn’s pub­lic pools (and dur­ing one such ses­sion I happened upon anoth­er now-part-time film crit­ic whose pri­vacy I won’t viol­ate here, but it was lovely to see this per­son and we had a nice chat), to come across these pas­sages from the late Brooklyn-born poet Charles Reznikoff, whose work I sought out on the recom­mend­a­tion of the great Phillip Lopate, a cur­rent neighbor…these are from Reznikoff’s Inscriptions 1944–1956:

3

One of my sen­tinels, a tree,

sent spin­ning after me

this brief

secret on a leaf:

the sum­mer is over—

forever.

4

This is the old famil­i­ar twilight:

the river flow­ing blue and rose;

the her­o’s tomb we used to visit—

and now each to his own tomb goes.

Some have reached their goal already;

become well off, well known—and died;

and some—grey-haired or bald—planning still and hoping,

walk in the twi­light beside the rosy tide.

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You are young and contemptuous.

If you were the sentry,

you would not fall asleep—

of course. 

Wounded

you would not weep. 

—In The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff, 1918–1975, Edited by Seamus Cooney, A Black Sparrow Book, 2005