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Epitaph for the Old Howard
Off Scollay Square, back from the subway, stands the last stand of the last Burlesque. Its doors are boarded; and its boards are bare. And like a charge, the license for its license hangs suspended over Howard Street. Where trefoil and the quatrefoil of Gothic windows framed a church, new worshippers of sex observed its ancient rituals. From pit and balcony, their eyes, like ghostly lovers, loved untouched. Their ghosts return. Desire returns like echoed ragtime tapping through a haunted house. Now furtive footsteps shuffle through more red-light exits till their sex is on the town. Turned inside out, desire's dim audiences disperse to crumpled tabloids in the street, and tabloids on newsstands. The street recovers what the Burlesque lost. Tired trouper, darkened derelict, the Howard Athenaeum's sign creaks windily, Ya got a light? Ya got a dime?