Ah, to be young, and in New York, and in the spring.

Exclamation point. Any minute now the open air will shout.

You're a robin's-egg-blue convertible with the top down.

High heels hit clean pavements in this spring-windy town.

You feel like the Museum of Modern Art with a new wing.

You are a tree behind the Library in leaf half out.

Zoo, have the zoo to a May-pole-party in Central Park,

You're the dictionary Noah, and admiral of the ark.

Glass, you are a tall glass wall in shine of the sun,

You run, in your mind you run, you are the new chairs,

Swirl-dresses, hi-fi. In fact you. Yet not the only one

In love. You're the tower that loves the planes you control.

You're horses at Jamaica, you're covers on the magazines,

You are the elevator that lifts beyond the mezzanines.

This is the time to read all the ads. You buy a vacation

Flight to Wales. You are bare steelwork, and excavation,

Daffodils at Rockefeller Center, books on the Times list.

You're happy as bock beer, smart as the lowest bluest shoes,

You're hopeful as a Communist or as an anti-Communist.

Stare at the store windows? You're what's in windows.

Exclamation point. That dot with a space-rocket thing

Set to go, because you're young, it's New York, and it's spring.

And Ah, never to be too old in spring to be in New York.

The name of the place is exclamation enough to work,

Whenever you say it, wherever you gaze or you go.

You float on a double-deck bus up You float on a double-deck bus up Fifth Avenue with love

Past Murray Hill from Washington Square, impossible but so.

You are the half-smile Sunday breakfaster. And see above.

You remember remembering Fanny Ellsler at Battery Park.

You're hard as the sidewalk gratings ringing. See above.

Be brisk and weathery and see if they can take it. Of

Course you know better, they can't, they don't know everything.

Manners fail, the skyline, - ah, but New York is New York,

Lovely, you can say the word now, lovely just before dark

With the million lights coming on, not bright enough for spring

To blind it, not yet, not you, not in New York in spring.

Ah yes, and to be middle-aged in town, and in the spring.

This ah knows what the young know, and what it will be to be old.

Ah, to be middle-aged in Manhattan, has to know everything

About everything forward and backward, hopes to meet Miss Rheingold,

And pick up a World-Telegram. You don't have to get around galleries,

You don't have to be one who on week-ends in Connecticut dallies,

But you could. Ah has it good, and knows it, and ah with love

Picks up tickets, cabs, stories and dogs and - see above.

Ah thinks, he may be right, that he knows s but everything

About New York, and maybe spring. Of course, there's always spring.