MURMÚRIOS DE MANHATTAN VII

Brooklyn Bridge

A segunda maior maravilha de Nova Iorque, a seguir ao skyline da cidade. A Brooklyn Bridge, que une precisamente o bairro de Brooklyn à ilha de Manhattan pode e deve ser atravessada a pé. Uma das coisas que me falta fazer, para além de subir à Estátua. Atravessa-se a Brooklyn Bridge ao pôr-do-sol, de lá para cá, de forma a poder contemplar a cidade das alturas banhada pelos matizes etéreos e intensos do ocaso, é da praxe.

A Brooklyn Bridge é uma pequena recordação do passado, ao lado de todas as outras pontes mais modernas que unem Manhattan ao continente. Parece saída directamente de um filme dos anos 40 e a sua filigrana de cabos de aço dançando no espaço e unidos por torres de pedra tornada cor de chocolate pela luz quente do sol, contrasta de forma brutalmente poética com os gigantes cinzentos ultra-modernos que se avistam no horizonte.

O poeta Hart Crane escreveu-lhe uma ode em 1930:

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty–

Then, with  inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
–Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic  sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,–
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,–

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path–condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.