Hanif Reads Toni

Hanif Reads Toni - McKinley Dixon/Hanif

Lyrics by：Hanif

Composed by：Toni M/McKinley Dixon/Constantino

I'm crazy about this city

City

City

City

City

Daylight slants like a razor

Cutting the buildings in half

In the top half I see looking faces

And it's not easy to tell which are people

Which the work of stonemasons

Below is a shadow where any blasé thing takes place

Clarinets and lovemaking

Fists and the voices of sorrowful women

A city like this one makes

Me dream tall and feel in on things

Hep it's the bright steel

Rocking above the shade below that does it

When I look over strips of

Green grass lining the river

At church steeples

And into the cream-and-copper

Halls of apartment buildings

I'm strong

Alone yes but top-notch and indestructible

Like the City in 1926

When all the wars are over

And there will never be another one

The people down there in the shadow are happy about that

At last at last everything's ahead

The smart ones say so

And people listening to them and

Reading what they write down agree

Here comes the new

Look out there goes the sad stuff the bad stuff

The things-nobody-could-help stuff

The way everybody was then and there

Forget that history is over

You all and everything's ahead at last

In halls and offices people are sitting around

Thinking future thoughts

About projects and bridges and

Fast-clicking trains underneath

The AP hires a colored clerk

Big-legged women with pink kitty tongues

Roll money into green tubes for later on

Then they laugh and put their arms around each other

Regular people corner thieves in alleys for quick retribution

And if he is stupid and has robbed wrong

Thieves corner him too

Hoodlums hand out goodies

Do their best to stay interesting

And since they are being watched for excitement

They pay attention to their clothes and the carving out of insults

No one wants to be an emergency at Harlem Hospital

But if the Negro surgeon is visiting

Pride cuts down the pain

And although the hair of the first class of colored nurses

Was declared unseemly for the official Bellevue nurse's cap

There are thirty-five of them now

All dedicated and superb in their profession

Nobody says it's pretty here nobody says it's easy either

What it is is decisive

And if you pay attention to the street plans

All laid out

The city can't