Looking back now, the first time I found it, about 3 years ago, on a sweltering evening, in the 3rd car of the No. 6 subway in the lower city, just left the 28th Street Station but had not yet entered the 23rd Street Station, with my back against the middle door, I was looking up at the opposite roof without any purpose or consciousness, looking up at the opposite roof of the car under the scene of a piece of healing athlete's foot, breast augmentation, weight loss ads, I suddenly found two of the poems: Sir, you are also fierce and fierce / But who is going to write whose epitaph?
The author of the poem is Joseph Brodsky, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature. Later, I learned that this was the first poem to be published on the New York subway after my own charter.
At the same time, I discovered that the series of poems in these carriages also had a title: flowing poetry. They were jointly organized by the New York City Rapid Transit Company and the American Poetry Society to be dedicated to all passengers. Even I, a passenger who has never written a poem and who has only read a few poems by the utmost chance, has been moved to try to use the limited time of the ride to see and memorize a few short poems, or a few short sentences from a longer poem: You ask me what I was thinking / Before we were lovers / The answer is simple / Before I know you / I have nothing to think about.
There are poems on subways and buses, and I think this is the greatest contribution that the New York City Rapid Transit Company has done since it has completely cooled the subway and buses. In all the subway and bus vehicles in New York City, there are two different poems every month, and it has published an anthology of 100 poems in total.
The reaction of New Yorkers seemed to be very good, and the subway passengers seemed to be very happy. Think about it, depicted in Hollywood movies that are shown all over the world, the New York subway is simply a vehicle to hell. So when we see Dante in hell on the subway saying, "In the middle of our journey of life/I find myself lost in a dark forest/Can't find that road," no matter how frustrated and lost we are, we don't feel lonely because we have the comfort of being understood, let alone two stops away.
There are still two stops to get home, which may be how you and I reacted on the subway after reading Dante's poem.
Lian Peiwei / Photo
Poets and poets may have recognized one thing long ago—poetry is indeed better than prose to grasp the point without wasting any words. But I was inspired by these "flowing poems" on the New York subway to understand this. You see Stephen Klein's "A Man Says to the Universe": A Man Says to the Universe / Sir, I Exist / But / The Universe Replies / This fact does not create any sense of obligation.
The difference between the two of us is not only that he is a man who lived in the 19th century, but that I am a man born in the 20th century, but that he is a prophet and that I am an afterthought. However, shortly after I discovered that my existence or not made no sense to the universe at all, I found on the subway an ode to Edna Vincent Murray, who was a generation later than him: We were tired, we were very happy and happy / We took the ferry back and forth all night / A dozen miles from each of the ones we bought out of nowhere / You ate an apple, I ate a pear / The sky was white, the cold wind groaned / The sun was rising, a bucket of gold.
I don't know if this apparently in love couple has read Dorothy Parker's "Unfortunate Accidents", another poet of the same era as its creator: When you tremble and sigh / swear that you belong to him / and he also claims his enthusiasm / infinite and immortal / Madame, please note / You have one lying.
After sitting on the subway in New York for so many years, I found that in addition to worrying about being stolen and robbed, I recently had another annoyance - is the apple eater lying, or the pear eater lying? And because I found that my existence or not has no meaning to the universe, then I can only temporarily forget existence and love, and return to a more basic and urgent reality: on a sweltering summer night on the New York subway, I want to be cold, not poetry.
What the? You say I underestimate poets? Look down on poetry? Sir, you are also fierce, I am also fierce, but who will write whose epitaph?
Author: Zhang Beihai. Source: Reader Magazine, Issue 3, 2022. On an impetuous day, The Reader sends you a moment of tranquility.