I shall sell you sell you: a N.Y. morning with Elizabeth Bishop

And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.
Elizabeth Bishop, "Varick Street"

Today I so happily went to unemployment for a shot-in-the-arm, a pep talk and new resources to keep me in the looking-for-work game. I was peppy; my counselor saw it but then, she's polite.

What was not peppy and really never is -- Varick Street on which my (my) state unemployment resources office is located. Varick tends toward no-nonsense. It runs from a vaguely nameless area, not the Village, not Tribeca to downtown. The small factories of early last century are replaced by industrial chintz--air conditioned buildings with glass and no architecture.

It used to be thusly, per Elizabeth Bishop:

Varick Street

At night the factories
struggle awake,
wretched uneasy buildings
veined with pipes
attempt their work.
Trying to breathe,
the elongated nostrils
haired with spikes
give off such stenches, too.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

On certain floors
certain wonders
Pale dirty light,
some captured iceberg
being prevented from melting.
See the mechanical moons,
sick, being made
to wax and wane
at somebody's imagination.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

Lights music of love
work on. The presses
print calendars
I suppose; the moons
made medicine
or confectionary. Our bed
shrinks from the soot
and hapless odors
hold us close.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

That she mingles in italics the refrain quoted in italics which is New York -- and what I am trying to do -- sell myself -- sell you sell you, my dear--that I like. L.A., where I grew up, is a city of salespeople as well. I'm not sure what's being sold in this poem, Elizbeth to her lover, her lover to Elizabeth, their love (two women) to the world.

". . . and hapless odors / hold us close." The entirety of our joinings and mingling binds us to our cities and more importantly to each other.

{from The Voice of the Poet: Elizabeth Bishop; Random House. I never had the audiobook which accompanied; hmmm.}