Slow Dreams of Pleasure

Longish for an entry in our alternate Poetry in Mutation series but a fine subway poem. The first in Paul Blackburn's early book Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit: A Bouquet for Flatbush from 1960. All five of the poems in this small book from 1960 are about riding on the subway. The other titles are: "Clarkson Avenue Ramble," "The Once-Over," Clickety Clack" (for Lawrence Ferlinghetti), and "Meditation on the BMT." Here is the cover of the first and only edition from Totem Press, whose address is listed as 402 W. 20th St. Gone, of course, as is Blackburn (he died in 1971). But the Franklin Avenue Line (now Shuttle) goes on. Intermittently.

THE FRANKLIN AVENUE LINE

at Park Place

or Dean Street

    across

decaying open platforms with their whitened wood

                        wash

waves of weathered greenness down the line

waves of somewhere unimaginable blossoms blowing

a late spring to tired faces                in this half-

    forgotten     slow    half-empty train

passing in the rain    in slow dreams of pleasure

                          toward the spur's end where

vaguely    in-

decisively        train and rain

come at the same

time

    to a measured 

                           stop