aubade on east 12th street

Aubade on East 12th Street
by August Kleinzahler (p904)

The skylight silvers
and a faint shudder from the underground
travels up the building's steel.

Dawn breaks across this wilderness
of roofs with their old wooden storage tanks
and caps of louvered cowlings

moving in the wind. Your back,
raised hip and thigh
well-tooled as a rounded baluster

on a lathe of shadow and light.

I think Kleinzahler’s goal with this poem is to illustrate the breaking dawn. And if so, he has done an excellent job. The explicit descriptions that he uses of the city waking up brings the reader into his poem. We can almost feel and hear the subways and their “faint shudder from the underground”. He continues to describe the rays of light upon the “roofs with their old wooden storage tanks” and the “caps of louvered cowlings” which are both awaiting the day to begin.

It is ironic that he chooses to describe the city as a “wilderness” despite the obvious difference. But in a way this makes sense because both are always changing, unpredictable, and bustling with life. Finally, “the lathe of shadow and light” bring together the last wisps of night and the first rays of morning, creating a memorable image and concludes his poem about morning appropriately.