Things to Do in New York (City)

By Ted Berrigan 1934–1983 Ted Berrigan

for Peter Schjeldahl

Wake up high up

frame bent & turned on

Moving slowly

& by the numbers

light cigarette

Dress in basic black

& reading a lovely old man’s book:

BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN

change

flashback

play cribbage on the Williamsburg Bridge

watching the boats sail by

the sun, like a monument,

move slowly up the sky

above the bloody rush:

break yr legs & break yr heart

kiss the girls & make them cry

loving the gods & seeing them die

celebrate your own

& everyone else’s birth:

Make friends forever

& go away

Ted Berrigan, “Things to Do in New York (City)” from The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan. Copyright © 2005 by University of California Press. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press.

Source: The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California Press, 2005)

Biography

Ted Berrigan—Edmund Joseph Michael Berrigan Jr.—was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the oldest of three children of Margaret Dugan and Edmund Berrigan, the chief engineer at Ward's Baking Company. On both sides the family was Irish Catholic. Berrigan attended local schools and entered Providence College, a local Catholic school, but left after a year and enlisted in the army.

Berrigan was sent to Korea in 1954 but never saw . . .

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