Tom Savage
Is “The Broken Tower” fixed or healed?
Today is Hart Crane’s birthday.
The film about him (see above) vanished
Without a trace after a week in one theater
But Crane can be reborn here and now
And lives. In some senses he didn’t die
Beyond the five he extinguished
When he took the fatal plunge.
Expunge that from the mind.
His film may someday reappear
Just as he never left us
In his magnificent, unruly poems.
We all have “Voyages” to make
And shall traverse them successfully
Though the later may not be
Precisely the right word.
Correctness be damned.
Changes come later, if at all
In this homage to a celebration
Only just begun.
We spin in his lines
And let ourselves fall in
To oceans we never knew were there
Even now, on the hundredth reading.
One could go to Brooklyn Bridge’s
New park, if this were the day or night
Where we might find him there, now
Writing new, inscrutable poems
We’ll have to ascribe to others’ hands
As they inscribe them onto our minds.
As the winds play with our hair,
We cross over.
