Simon Barraclough
Saturn on Seventh
Saturn on Seventh
I’ve been giving the miraculous a whirl
but what have I got? A stomach crammed
with cheap chimichanga, a shoulder-check
from Christian Slater and, though I don’t know it yet,
a cloned credit card number. The Empire State
is a popsicle dipped in its Christmas reds
and greens. “Let’s eat and drink ourselves
into hospital.” The waitress only just
brought you round with ice-water fingers
on the cubicle floor between courses
and flaming, straw-melting cucarachas.
We came to celebrate this town
but dragging ourselves up Seventh Ave.
back to the peeling Pennsylvania room,
we sway wasted and weary past
stacks of Japanese Playboys, Brazilian
Vogues, battlements of L. Ron Hubbard
remainders, a trestle table over-stacked
with cheaply-stitched-together baseball caps;
all the naff globalised tat we’ve come
to expect from the greatest city on earth.
And then this charcoal-on-cardboard sign,
See Saturn for a dollar, and the giggling line
of clubbers where a homeless astronomer
has angled a prized and battered telescope
at a quarter of the sky to the right
of the Chrysler Building which tonight
looks like it might have been piloted here
by Buster Crabbe. I toss a dollar in his cap
expecting nothing but empty night,
rest my brow against the rubber cup,
sealing out the street-level light
and there, in a black starless spotlight:
Saturn, as fat as a two pound coin,
fluxing with my pulse conducted through
the sensitive instrument, tilts its tipsy
rings towards Manhattan. I don’t want to leave
its impeccable silence but you’ve paid
your money too and I step aside.
A random reveller asks me, “Did you see it?
Is it real?” and “Was it in colour?”
You take your fill and turn away, smiling.
We continue up the hill in silence,
our minds in parallel universes.
