Printers Row, Chicago
- Dipika Mukherjee

I come to Chicago
resisting assimilation.

From old cities in Europe
to the older ruins of Asia,
I have resisted the hyphenations
the identity reconstructions,
of tired-huddled-masses,
in this adulterated corner
of the globe.

Until, in Printer's Row
– in an antiquarian bookshop,
red-bricked from 1896 –
a man reads from the distressed
first edition of the Rime, hardcover
separated from spine, stark lines drawn
above an idle ship on a painted ocean;
He knows Tagore, and on his desktop
is the image of Waheeda,
incandescent beauty.

He talks about translators,
epics, New York broadsides;
In that tiny shop, laying bare the
Nuances – the proclivity of
Imagination – of this brave new world.