City Story

— after Gunter Grass

There is a city,
and there is a man in the city
who is alone.
One hundred eighty thousand people
are said to live there
but he is alone,
so for his purposes we can say
there is no city.

There is a man
who is alone in the space
called a city by others, and he
is happy there, so we may say
he is alone and happy
and for his purposes we must say
that the space is solitude,
not loneliness, and he is in it.

There is a city, and a man,
and if he sees another he thinks
the man is a part of his solitude,
so the city becomes a memory,
and for his purposes
and ours we must remember a time
when a city existed, and that time is not now
as there is solitude in its former place.

If the city exists now somewhere else,
there is likely a man in that city
for whom there is no city, and for whom
only solitude exists, and happiness
at the sight of another whom he sees as
an extension of his solitude.
Who truly lives in a city?
Do cities truly exist,

or are we who imagine that we live in cities
alone in misery and cheer alike, moving among
memories while choosing tomatoes
and beer, paying rent to imaginary landlords,
speaking to ourselves as if we could
hear and understand the answers we give ourselves?
Here is a city, here is a man who lives here;
the man is alone, the city his comfortable nest of fiction.