buying poetry at 2 am...

"walking back from the subway station at two in the morning i find a second-hand bookstore open all night in west eighth street, i go in and buy more cummings; to purchase early works of cummings in the small hours, in the heart of 'the little barbarous greenwich perfumed fake' and march home with them in the frosty night, while the tugs hoot and central heating plants under the long black street puff away through its many manholes like geysers on the moon, that is to enjoy that anonymous urban civilization that auden has chosen, and of which baudeliare dreamed and despaired"

cyril connolly on his first visit to america, in horizon, oct. 1947 (drawing by ee cummings)