Bridge

The Bridge is an enduring symbol of the conquest of ingenuity over physical obstacles. It is about creating connections where none previously existed. And, it is a metaphor for the basic human need to connect with others of a like mind, to be understood. I explored these cultural connections in an earlier post https://foursquaremiles.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/culture-of-one/

I’m over here, you’re over there

but every day we build little bridges

to meet somewhere in the middle

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“Bridges (Travessia)”

Milton Nascimento

as performed by Sergio Mendes Brasil ’88

I have crossed a thousand bridges
In my search for something real
There were great suspension bridges
Made like spiderwebs of steel
There were tiny wooden trestles
And there were bridges made of stone
I have always been a stranger
And I’ve always been alone

There’s a bridge to tomorrow
There’s a bridge from the past
There’s a bridge made of sorrow
That I pray will not last
There’s a bridge made of colors
In the sky high above
And I think that there must be
Bridges made out of love

I can see him in the distance
On the river’s other shore
An his hands reach out in longing
As my own have done before
And I call across to tell him
Where I believe the bridge must lie
And I’ll find it, yes I’ll find it!
If I search until I die

When the bridge is between us
We’ll have nothing to say
We will run through the sunlight
And he’ll meet me halfway
There’s a bridge made of colors
In the sky high above
And I’m certain that somewhere
There’s a bridge made of love

Vou seguindo pela vida
Me esquecendo de você
Eu não quero mais a morte
Tenho muito que viver
Vou querer amar de novo
E se não der não vou sofrer
Já não sonho, hoje faço
Com meu braço o meu viver

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To Brooklyn Bridge

Hart Crane – 1899-1931

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
—Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,—
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,—

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path—condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

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