Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters - meaning Summary
Dawn Observed, Making Permanence
The speaker registers a dawn city scene, noting pigeons on a church roof, a lone bird on the cross, and blue-grey clouds. He mentions Larry Rivers arriving to photograph him while he photographs the birds and writes to "Dawn." The poem frames small, urban details—the Avenue A bus, exhaust—as attempts to arrest fleeting experience. It expresses a wish to fix transience through art and to make perception permanent.
Read Complete AnalysesPigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers 'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn. I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus. O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever!
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