Postscript

Long before the towers and the bridges, the subways and the suburbs, New york began to assimilate the first great immigrant wave and in the process struggled to find a way to make the American ideal relevant amid the disorder and disruption of so many varying peoples brought face to face. In the 1840's a frank and honest young poet named Walt Whitman, born in Brooklyn, walked the streets and absorbed the city deep into his soul. Street after street he found not only slums and misery, the babble of strangers, the mutterings of the insecure, and the depravity of indifference; he found a city of courage, hospitality, openness, and friendship. His city. A dream he made real with his words. A city he saw becoming real before his eyes, amid the turmoil. The crowds and noise that grew each day, the bumping up of cultures, did not frighten him, it excited him. On his sliver of land between the sparkling waters no one group represented the city; it was in the mix that the spirit of the place was found. The democratic mix. He saw (as quoted from Ric Burns' magnificent documentary of NY) "an endless river of people, each pursuing his or her own destiny. Where some saw the classes of races, religions, and nationalities he saw a daily sharing..." The city yearned for more than what was; he sensed that longing and loved it. Whitman, gazing at the multitude that crossed the East River ferries each day, sharing the ride that took them to their labors and then home again, felt a kinship with every individual. He saw each one and loved them. He felt his city and his heart merge. He saw the future and found hope.

The poem that follows is a celebration of the moment and an embrace of the future. The immense American experiment was weaving what he believed would be a new reality for the world. Now, with no place too remote to affect us, it is an optimism I hope all of us will share. It is an ancient hope, of course, but along the banks of these New York rivers, the wide ports, welcoming the ships (and planes) that brought so many, it is a hope that found its legs and began to wander, finding a home among the hearts of the citizens of the world. Our people.

Flood tide below me I see you face to face

On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose

It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you;

I project myself a moment to tell you—also I return.

I loved well those cities;

I loved well the stately and rapid river;

The men and women I saw were all near to me;

Others the same—others who look back on me, because I look’d forward to them;

What is it, then, between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.

--- "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry",

from Leaves of Grass,

Walt Whitman