October 18, 2007

Fierce mural.

Engine Company 6

Painted on the door of Engine Company 6 (49 Beekman Street, NYC).

13 comments:

ricpic said...

Red meat men, with lion pride,
Fight for, defend, protect us.
Only those can we entrust
To fire fight who burn inside.

Ralph L said...

Only those who burn inside
Can we entrust to fight fire.

What are the blotches of red paint on the sides?

Ann Althouse said...

The face is outlined in red and then the rest of the door is red. The two rectangles are little windows in the door.

Trooper York said...

Risin' up, back on the street
Took my time, took my chances
Went the distance
Now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive

So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip
On the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

It's the eye of the tiger
It's the thrill of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge
Of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And his fortune must always be
Eye of the tiger

Face to face, out in the heat
Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry
They stack the odds
Still we take to the street
For the kill with the skill to survive

It's the eye of the tiger
It's the thrill of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge
Of our rival
And the last known survivor
Stalks his prey in the night
And his fortune must always be
Eye of the tiger
(Survivor)

ricpic said...

Oops. Make that: tiger pride.

Anonymous said...

No matter, Ricpic. Real men and big cats all in a cat-egory. Great thot your verse.

Eye of the Tiger- cat fighting

Anonymous said...

Stupid cats in the above. Nothing worth fighting over. Like singing ol' Dixie.

Balfegor said...

Apropos for a fire station, I guess --

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Ralph L said...

Balfegor, perhaps that was their inspiration. I can see the guys on "Rescue Me" reciting Blake and Byron in their free time.

Anonymous said...

The old man is snoring
And I'm taming the tigger
(You can't tame the tigger)
Tigger, tigger burning bright
Nice, kitty kitty
(Boring!)
Tigger, tigger burning bright
(You can't tame the tigger)
Oh, be nice, kitty kitty
(Boring!)

Joni Mitchell

rhhardin said...

Rilke :

His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly --. An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.

Valery :

London - tiger in the zoo - a superb animal, a head of formidible solemnity and that mask one knows, in which there is something Mongolian, regal force, potentiality, an occult look of power, of something that has gone past cruelty, fatality rather; the features of a truly absolute monarch at rest; bored, perilous, loaded: impossible to be more completely tiger than that.

Yet this splendid beast crosses, uncrosses, his limbs; from time to time one sees muscles flexing gently under that fulvous mantle streaked with black. The tail is alive. Is he aware of these far displacements? The beast is a sort of empire.

The ``sparking off'' of local reflexes - must attempt to decipher the life locked within...

Pendulary motion of wild beasts along the grills where their stripes rub the bars.

He opens his jaws. Yawns - presence and absence of the tiger's soul, eternally waiting for something to happen...

No fierceness: something altogether more formidable - an inexpressible certainty of being deadly.

What fullness, faultless egoism, sovereign isolation! The imminence of all that he is worth is upon him...

Impossible to be more oneself, more exactly armed, endowed, charged, instructed in all tha concerns being perfectly tiger. Every appetite, temptation, finds its perfect instrument in him ready to hand.

(selected paragraphs)

Alas, the Rilke was Panther, not Tiger, but still...

blogging cockroach said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
blogging cockroach said...

unlike my grandfather i never was a poet
so i really don't get wm blake with that
tyger tyger burning bright
in the forests of the night stuff
i mean eye and symmetry don't rhyme do they
maybe he's talking about god's creation
and how it is impossible for humans to really
understand something as absolute and fierce
and alien as a tiger with his tiger outlook and mentality
and decipher the life locked within
...great line btw if you look back a bit
in these comments and find it...

i will tell you having been a cockroach
that humans will --never-- understand
the view from down here underfoot and hidden
and always existing at the margins
of the great human created world
with its cities and trash and all

so what's with a tiger themed firehouse
i understand about being fierce etc
and that firemen are often called on to be so
but the burning bright part might have made
the city fathers a little nervous

oh well i guess it related to tammany
among other things that used to make people nervous about nyc
of course nowadays nyc is as clean as the driven snow
mayor giuliani will be happy to tell you all about
how he did it
so will mayor bloomberg