Edgar Allen Poe's 199th...

Edgar Allen Poe's 199th birthday, falling due on 19th January 2008. P-i-R has opted to celebrate with a suitable tribute from the American poet Hart Crane (1899-1932):

from The Bridge Tunnel Section / New York Subway

Whose head is swinging from the swollen strap?
Whose body smokes along the bitten rails,
Burts from a smoldering bundle far behind
In back forks of the chasms of the brain,-
Puffs from a riven stump far out behind
In interborough fissures of the mind...?

And why do I often meet your visage here,
Your eyes like agate lanterns - on and on
Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?
- And did their riding eyes right through your side,
And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?
And Death, aloft,- gigantically down
Probing through you - toward me, O evermore!
And when they dragged your retching flesh,
Your trembling hands that night through Baltimore -
That last night on the ballot rounds, did you
Shaking, did you deny the ticket, Poe?

For Gravesend Manor change at Chambers Street.
The platform hurries along to a dead stop.