* The Streets of New Haven (1944 -2012)

 

 (A reflection for Mr. Daponte-Smith)

NEW HAVEN STREETS

 

(1944 - 2014)

 

For seven decades New Haven's streets



have been my

 

 

cradle.

Dickens and Twain called

 

 

Hillhouse

 

 

“the most beautiful street in America.”

 

These were the streets
 

of Presidents: Bill (and Hillary),
Bushes, and the rotund Taft.

 

 

 

 

 

The streets of Buckley’s God and Man at Yale

 

 

 

 

The streets of Black Panthers and Sloane Coffin.

The same streets on
 

 

which John Hinckley
 

 

 

stalked Jodi Foster,
 

 

 

hatching a demented plan

 

 

 

for a President.

 

Streets where the Streeps and Winklers

 

 

 

walked to drama class; hoping to hear

 

 

 

the Shubert ghosts,

 

 

 

Thornton and Tallulah,

 

 

 

rehearsing "The Skin of Our Teeth."


 

In my great-grandmother's day,
 


these streets were horse-filled
 


pathways from which the stench


 

of dying slaves trapped aboard
 

 

a harbored Amistad

 

 

wafted toward Yale nostrils.

Now they are asphalt:

 

 

Streets where campus police



merely kick a black man on graduation night.*

 

Ah, New Haven: my birthplace,
 

my curseplace.

_______________________________

Paul Keane

M. Div. ‘80

*http://yalegrad80.blogspot.com