Manhattan Noir

         I spun my chair around and stared out at Times Square. The Camels spectacular on the Claridge puffed fat steam smoke rings out over the snarling traffic.The dapper gentleman on the sign, mouth frozen in a round O of perpetual surprise, was Broadway's harbinger of spring. Earlier in the week teams of scaffold-hung painters transformed the smoker's dark winter homburg and chesterfield into seersucker and panama straw, not as poetic as capistrano swallows, but it got the message across.

Falling Angel

William Hjortsberg

1978