Ishmael, swallowed up by the American Night

To Amr the Egyptian at the UN, Melville, and all those who carry hope,
however injured, in the head of their heart

All woodcuts by Belgium's Frans Masereel, 1889-1972.

“Listen, Ishmael,” he said and broke the night, “I do not like it in the U.S. anymore. I’m tired of all these terra firma places of self-righteousness, weary of the dust and the reek of L.A., nauseated by Chicago, and Houston, sick of New York—all of them blighted and crude.”

I smiled, even though I knew that I was fighting with yet another farewell in the cave of time.

“Worse,” he said, “most Americans are damn dull and indifferent, have no feelings for anyone but themselves; immature folks who prefer to bloat their bellies and wave their sacred cannibal-flag wherever they can. God, they make me vomit. They make me suffocate. No, America, you’ve had it. America, you’re finished. I’m going to leave this beer-gutting land, this greasy megalopolis as soon as I can. And I promise, Ishmael, not to return. Good riddance, America. America, good-bye.”

I hung on to my smile as if it were a life-preserver in a leaky boat. And Death, the aging wrestler, bounced up and down inside my brain like Dick Bruiser on top of a sulking young hunk. I knew I had no chance, no choice. Good-bye, America. America, good-bye.

And when nothing could be done anymore, when words fell to the floor like birds that had broken their wings, I got up and left. Good-bye, America. America, good-bye.”

But before I even had a chance to find my way along the boulevards, I was swallowed by a whale of a crowd that heaved and pushed and sucked me through its giant jaws into the stomach of the night where I was swirled around among a million living fish:

blue-tinted Avon ladies from Florida, smelling of anything but the oil of freshly-killed whales, loud-dreaming of future commissions and slender young men;

resentful preachers and blonde pro-lifers from a state in the Bible-Belt-Mind where their TV God regularly drops loads of anger and fear;

Mexican honeymooners from Detroit on the way to their first, magical night at the Y;

worn-out ballet dancers with remnants of dying swan on their limbs;

late night tourists from Buenos Aires and Tokyo, treasure-hunting in the underbelly of Times Square for the secret heart of the neon dark;

illegal refugees from Haiti and San Salvador on their way to a Fifth Avenue basement church where the ecumenical blood of Christ is being poured, week after week, by defiant Lutherans, Quakers, and Mennonites who have forgiven Judas in their midst and his hidden mike;

champagne-happy assistant profs from California, pleased with themselves and their second anthology, one mugging away from the Ritz;

pale pick-pockets, sun-burnt from triumphant smiles, carefully dry-cleaning conventioneers from Tulsa, Toronto and St. Paul;

immigrant fishermen in codpiece, jogging-suits chewing and grinding a piece of bar-table-rape, until, reluctantly, they let go and spit out at least parts of their past;

middle-class guys negotiating with bullet-eyed pushers the value of dried angel-sperm before squeezing out fresh, green wads of Washington, Jackson, the White House, and the U.S. Treasury;

heavy-set emergency plumbers in dirty overalls, leaving their van, horsing around, and taking their time to quick-fix fears and broken-basement dreams for overtime pay;

over-sized black pimps with midnight tattoos and cool, home-made frowns overseeing white shift-workers in scarlet skirts and shrapnel perfume, who wait for quick weddings in wary, old rooms;

rowdy, hairy-chested sailors, out in aimless force, molesting the waning peace, gang-raping the open night; 

trembling, deflowered Moonie girls, still clutching roses in their wilting hands;

young teachers from the video burbs, new-waving raps for their Sunday School kids;

former Palestinian engineers, their faith in home ripped-off like legs, transporting heavy, greengrocered hopes and buckets of hesitant flowers to the stony desert Bronx;

back-to-basics supporters of well-connected judges, throwing fresh-bugged apple-pies through bedroom windows to shield the law from aging humanists.

Casually-dressed minds on well-heeled legs, satisfied that Fascists only live on the other side of the big divide, intently discussing baseball, marathons, and the Chinese circus come to town;

bleeding peace marchers from Amsterdam, cursing in English and Dutch hordes of organized wasps in “Born in the U.S.A.” leather, armed to the spikes with knives and skulls and bones;

bearded, medalled, Vietnam vets, orange-colored headaches in their lungs, wheeling their invalid chairs in circles larger than the angriest Arlington grave;

inebriate bag-ladies and Appalachian tramps, guzzling the good life, a few sips away from their final strokes;

overworked medics from San Antonio with spermatozoan eyes, sick of incessant restraints and rubber gloves, searching for two-stepping lovers and hot, three-stepping tricks;

Club-Med look-alikes, easy on the eyes, feather-tarring chosen souls with a thousand handouts of their “Jews for Jesus” zeal;

ill-nourished Indian newspaper boys guarding and flogging tomorrow’s issue of The New York Times, saving up for college in Vermont;

overweight priests in colorful drag, ready to serve at their last supper in Queens;

Wall Street executives, after-hour-suited, designer-glassed, trading factory loads of working souls for Mafia futures and forbidden shares;

swarthy, unshaved taxi drivers who fled Tehran, still dreaming of their Ph.D. and another jihad;

pot-bellied cops in tight-fitting shirts, corruption glued to the tops of their crotches like guns, ready to lock up the next angry flood;

cock-strutting peacocks with super-hung, urine bleached jeans, released from prison only hours ago, picking up driftwood and street-cornered fights;

runaway schoolgirls from Virginia Beach, begging for miracles to buy a big Mac and a shake, perhaps even a small supply of maxi-pads and cigarettes;

silent islands of moody men, barbed faces on sturdy harpoons, waiting for meteorites and mysterious vessels and crafts, proving that meditation and water are wedded forever;

lesbian social workers who’ve purged themselves of husbands and booze, singing the praise of feminist politics and the joy of their body-built strength;

and throngs of pumped up, pimple-faced teens from New Jersey and upstate New York, laughing, and drinking, and cruising the volatile dark.

And somewhere in the smoldering stomach of that heaving and pushing, that swirling and sucking, that bragging and quarreling whale of a crowd, somewhere deep in the deeps of the decaying streets, I heard an ancient voice: 

“You cannot be true if you have more of joy than sorrow in you. But whatever happens to you, always remember that the waves will rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly. For in the deeps, millions of mixed shades and shadows—drowned dreams, all that we call lives and souls—lie dreaming and heaving the waves with their sighs, eternally.”  *

And when the whale of the crowd had thrown me up and blown me out, I deeply inhaled the salty American night and found myself again. And was restored. Alive. And whole. And I felt a soothing breeze caressing the veins on my hands. That’s when I knew that I could trust the wisdom of the wind, the strength of my unbroken wings.

And in the enduring, the growing of America, I saw my own. 

And I welcomed the early warmth of another day.


HENRIK EGER

*Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Chicago, IL, October 11 – November 8, 1986
and Philadelphia, PA, August 30, 2015

This poem is copyrighted. If you are interested in publishing it or adapting it to music, film, etc., 
please contact the author.

Back to AMERICA