Broadway, the Magical!

Inspired by Walt Whitman’s “Broadway, the Magnificent!”

Broadway! A microcosm of the city! In the city which was a forest.

The forest which became a park. The park, a city. The city, a capitol. The capitol, a metropolis.

Akin, the trail became a path. The path, a road. The road, a highway. The highway, a symbol.

The river of pedestrians, cars, and towering buildings weaves through the city and rebel against the enlightened plane which organized the city. But Broadway, oh Broadway! It organized the city, into squares, public spaces, and relief from monotony. It was, and still is, a romantic gesture to the times of old.

The source of the river is Bowling Green, the home of a cattle market, flooding, the bourgeoisie’s recreation, the flame of revolution. Now, it is just a quaint, quiet, fountained park. The river defies gravity and climbs up a hill, leaving what was once a dilapidated fort -to confront a charging behemoth made of bronze, what is a bull.

A man with a blinding orange vest sweeping litter into a bin. Sweeping away the horrid reality which might spoil the illusion of Broadway’s majesty. People forget, especially those of Manhattan, that Broadway used to be a place where folks were run over and maimed by the inordinate crowds.

Oh Broadway! People forget that you are a collage of different times, housing different buildings and different tales.

Remember the time when Trinity Church projected the spire that pointed to the heavens! Now it is but reaching for the skies, or a quarter of the way up a building nearby, a gesture which seems foolish.

City Hall, on Broadway, put Philadelphia to shame. What city could compete with one that is built around Broadway, a street which is the center of the Earth and which only elicits finishing a building on the front and sides in all its glory?

From all over the world, people eagerly come to see Broadway, except from one city: New York City. The people of the city avoid its streets, its passageways, and its secrets. They only use the hypotenuse between points A and B, which sometimes, when travelling diagonally in the city is Broadway. The irony is amusing. The conflict and coexistence.

There are groups of people. There are hundreds – no, thousands – of people who are all together on the path, but each is alone.

I look forward, but I cannot see so far because the road twists. I know that further on, the river meanders through midtown, briefly kisses central park, and continues onward to our school. It is a composite of different roads, different plans, ideas, ideals, goals, and dreams. I don’t know what the future of Broadway will hold, but it is undoubtedly intertwined with the lattice of Manhattan’s future as well as my own.

-Benjy