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This poem originates in my personal experience of New York's West Village shortly before
and after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
A shoe and watch repair shop I frequented closed, and
the "magic" quality of the neighborhood changed unalterably.The poem became a meditation on
a relationship when I allowed myself to play
with the words "restore" and "repair."
Something to think about: How would you describe a neighborhood you cherish? What concrete
details come to mind? What changes have you witnessed and how do you feel about those
changes?
Repair
More stall than store, his cramped space on Carmine
smelled of Cats Paw leather cream polish. A belt, a boot, our shoes for soles: he restored
them, mended your silver heron lamp from Norway; replaced your cracked crystal.
He charged so little I wondered how
he paid the rent, a Chekhov character transposed to the West Village, resolving
toggle switches, latches, sundered bolts, talking to himself in Russian jewelers
eye-piece fixed in his face.
After the towers fell, the shoe and watch man moved; what we couldnt repair
between us stayed broken.
Seasonal vendors hawked fir and spruce wreaths. A mercantile buzz of commerce dizzied
Carmine, where windows of valentines surfaced and disappeared. In restauro read the sign,
that spring, on the Church of the Sacred Conversation.
I missed our magician of the material, tried to bring you renovated things
from the Used CD Emporium and Bookstore, bazaar of second and third
chances, our New York of the damaged, the irredeemable, beyond repair.