FEET OF CLAY

Once was a time
When Manhattan was a city 
Of red brick and brown stone.
Much of it still is. 

Bricks came by barge
From kilns along the Hudson
Where clay was fired into
A fiery red ‘common’.

Many remain obscured
Along its streets…
Hidden behind sheets
Of grey or tawny stone

Like the Empire State Building
Framed in steel, infilled
With red brick
And then faced in limestone. 

Or, more humbly
Where red brick terraced
Houses are covered 
 In a veneer of brownstone.

They remain the predominant
Material in its ancient fabric -
The great blocks of Manhattan’s
Urban grid all built in brick.

It is after all, an historic city:
It’s rustic teguments
Laid cell by cell
Brick by brick

By immigrant labor in the 
Late nineteenth and early
Twentieth centuries. Laid
By the calloused hands…

Of a worker horde who lived
In the houses and tenements 
Of the outer Boroughs; Now
Manhattan’s great edifices… 

Are reserved for the old
And rich, entombed
In orderly stacks
Along its storied Avenues.

But, as the Borough’s brick 
Slowly crumbles, Harken:
For out of clay they were taken
And to clay they shall return…