A VIEW OF NEW YORK CITY : GARY BECK Next Poem:....................................................................................................................................... Back to Poetry Index

So how did the Indians
get to Manhattan Island
before the Brooklyn Bridge
allowed rapid transit?
Did they paddle across
the untainted Hudson River
before General Electric
irradiated the fishes?
Did their canoes land safely
in the financial district
before Wall Street carnivores
gobbled up the neighborhood?
Where did the Indians come from?
Brooklyn? Queens? The Bronx? New Jersey?
Though they were called something else then
and had forests instead of concrete
And what did the Indians do?
Hunt? Pick berries? Invest in real estate?
Set up tourist welcome centers
for the arriving Europeans?
And what about the night life?
Did they spend it snoozing,
because there was no fossil fuel
to light the after hours clubs?
Then Peter Stuyvesant arrived
and in the most salient fact (after Columbus?)
of grade school education
made the first new world business deal.
Now, grade school teachers were a little vague
about the value of the dollar,
but peg-leg Pete got a real bargain
that even included Riker's Island.
We don't hear much more about Indians
because they got in dutch with the new neighbors
and either moved in with their cousins,
or got jobs as traveling wampum salesmen.
The Indians didn't get social benefits--
because the Dutch and Brits didn't like welfare
and pioneered the American way….
Eliminate what gets in your way.

Gary Beck’s poetry and recent fiction has been published in numerous literary magazines. His plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes, and Sophocles have also been produced Off-Broadway.

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