Boris laughed and laughed. “No, no,” he said. “I mean it’s an island. Every way you walk, if you walk long enough, you come to water. Now isn’t that the funniest thing?” And Boris’s mother thought it was funny too.
“So many people and all to live on an island!” she kept saying to herself. “I should think it would make them a lot of work!”
And Boris who remembered the bridges and the ferry boats and the “tubes” thought so too!
Boris, he went out to walk
To find the country wide
And he walked west and west he walked
But he found the Hudson wide!
And so he turned himself about
And walked the other way
And he walked east and east he walked
And there East River lay!
But Boris he went out again
To find the country wide
And he went north and north he went
To Harlem River’s side.
Again he turned himself about
And went the other way
And he went south and south he went
And there the harbor lay!
Then Boris scratched his head and thought:
“Whatever way I go
There’s always water at the end
Whatever way I go!
New York must be an island
An island it must be
So many people all shut in
By rivers and by sea!
They’ve bridges and they’ve ferry boats
Across the top to go;
They’ve subways and they’ve Hudson tubes
To burrow down below
To get things in, to get things out
How busy they must be!
In that enormous big New York
On rivers and on sea!”
SPEED