A group of artists were creating sketches of an ancient elm in the corner of Washington Square, New York, and asked me to join them. I explained I was better with words than images, but suggested I could write the tree a poem. Here it is – more or less as performed in Washington Square to a kindly and slightly bemused group of artists.

The Lenape people had a name for this marshy land
But the sounds you first heard were from a different tongue –
Commands in English, ordering trees like soldiers on parade;
Sedimenting gridlines, still shaping how New York is planned.

At first you stood above the buildings,
Until sky-scraping neighbours blocked your sun.
However high you grew, concrete made the sky dark
And you were cornered here in this palisaded park.

New Yorkers leant against your bark,
Sharing Dutch and English and Russian and Yiddish,
Spanish and German, Chinese and French,
And more, and more, until Babel took shape around your heartwood.

Still today you endure
Chattering shoppers, artists, children and scholars.
As I write, a honky-tonk piano,
Plays by the fountain for Sunday dollars.

But did you shudder when the Twin Towers fell,
Or when a slave’s neck cracked, hung beneath your branches,
Did you wonder at our broken roots?
On this chill-bright autumn day,
While mycelium links you to every tree
From the Harlem River to the Battery
I too have formed connections,
Although less consequential.
I sit and write at a table as cold-fingered artists toil.
Our friendly words drop contentedly like falling leaves
On Manhattan’s rich and troubled soil.