SHATTERED BOTTLES
Shattered bottles lay beneath my feet
This was a disquieted land once
Where Bolsheviks and
Anarchists ran free, and posted diatribes
To telephone poles.

When I chanced upon it
It was more pristine
And the frightened hordes
Were by then ghosts
I read about in History

But sordid is sordid
And the stain of years
Is not so easily concealed
By Benjamin Moore
And his four-inch brush

I still hear the crying
In the stone; I still see the faces of
My tormentors and do not rue
The fact that some have died
And some were killed

Some by their own hands;
Some by the needle
Or the gun. I did not mourn
Or say novenas
And Mass Cards were something only
My Catholic friends
Thought to acquire
And lay on the table in the funeral home

I walk among the ruins
Which are not so ruinous now

Today, the janitors sweep
Up the broken glass
Very quickly
And I have a hard time
Remembering
How it crunched below my shoes.

05/04/2009

Author's Note: A rumination on growing up in a New York City housing project

Posted on 05/04/2009
Copyright © 2025 Ken Harnisch