City Story

Originally posted 10/13/2009.

— after Gunter Grass;  for Italo Calvino

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

A man
who is alone in the space
called a city by others
is happy there,
alone and happy.
For his purposes
the space is solitude,
not loneliness.

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

The city may now exist somewhere else
and there is likely a man in that city
for whom there is no city, and for whom
only solitude exists, solitude and happiness
at the sight of another whom he sees as
an extension of his solitude.

Here is a city,
here is a man who lives in the city,
moving among memories 
while choosing tomatoes and beer, 
paying rent to an imaginary landlord
who lives elsewhere in the city
that is in fact
a comfortable nest
woven from comfortable fiction.