Time, Tulips, and two Fists

"February" by James Schuyler was published in 1969 in his collection Freely Espousing. Gazing out the window (. . . wasn't he always?) he registers with paper and pen "A chimney, breathing a little smoke." Presumably he is in New York City, as his later reference to seeing a woman at the window leads me to believe he is, and with personification he brings a stack of bricks to life. The City is Alive. His attention is drawn to the late afternoon sky, in particular, the pink afterglow of sunset on the blue sky made by the sun "I cannot see." Using repetition, he writes of the pink "I can't quite see." Why does he point out this inability to see? Perhaps Schuyler's insecurities are up a bit at this time; maybe he is feeling impaired, inadequate, cut off from reality. It's February and in line six, using a very O'Hara-like style, he records the time and date: "at five P.M. on the day before March first." Now his focus is on the five tulips standing in a glass of water on his desk, and more importantly, the green of the stems and leaves "like something I can't remember," a similar repetition of inability only this time it is memory failure. And then he takes us back in time to December, a time when he was by the sea looking at temples when he notices a green wave that is movingin a violet sea . This poetry is full of colors! Striking colors! He references a violet sky. We are pointed to the sky again. The sound of trucks brings him back to the present; he describes them going over a hill on Second Avenue "into the sky." How grounded is he in his present condition one might ask. But then the cement of the poem is poured by the following lines: "I can't get over / how it all works together / like a woman who just came to her window /and stands there filling it / jogging her baby in her arms." What seems to be disjointed imagery, thoughts and memories is brought together by this "how it all works together". After all, it is just life. It is being here Now, in the Moment. "I can see the little fists" Schuyler relates to these little balled up hands. He can see them unlike the images in the beginning of the poem. The baby beyond his window is alive like the pink tulips in his room, like the heart beating in the poet as he pens his observations.
The night is falling. Schuyler closes with a list. It's the this, it's the that. He ends his poem with "It's a day like any other." Pure Schuylerean. It is the ordinary. He makes it beautiful and worthwhile.