A bluff near the highest point of Secaucus is occupied by the Hudson County Hospital for Mental Diseases, some of whose windows face a terrain that even the most rational mind might find less than tranquilizing. . . . the meadows have a sinister quality, ever present and impossible wholly to define.
—John Brooks, “The Meadows”
For Dr. Christopher L Trause, Dr. Roy W. Schlische, James Diorio, and David Messineo
Row us out across the Meadows, to your Snake Hill island row!
So they rowed, and here we landed in Secaucus down below.
Here to me through all the mists and vapors of the Hackensack
Came the hissing and the gasping of the water snakes so black.
Coming closer to the shoreline of this Snake Hill rising tall:
Sprawling, crawling, writhing, sliding, after a quick summer squall,
Squirming, hissing, gasping, glistening on the rocks in one great pile
Giant snakes, so slick and scaly, scintillating all the while.
Once the Indians called this place siskakes, “Land of Many Snakes,”
Now Secaucus, long licked by the Hackensack’s slow salty wakes,
And the Dutch in coming called this geologic oddity
Slangenbergh, “Snake Hill” to us, thus christened for posterity.
Legend tells that when the Indians, on arrival of the Dutch,
Heard the sound of their strange language, being frightened very much
By the shouting of the Dutchmen, they ran west in one grand sweep
Over Bergen hills and perished, buried now in Snake Hill’s heap.
Others say that Snake Hill’s rock heaps aren’t bones, but older yet,
That a huge volcano’s core has formed this natural parapet,
Igneous rock intruded hot two hundred million years ago,
Hardened now for all to see above the river’s ebbing flow.
But whatever story one may choose Snake Hill remained a site
That foreboded dread and danger, so avoided day and night.
Picked by pirates hiding out, infesting all the Meadowlands,
Snake Hill formed a promontory for these wild and vicious bands.
Swept by fire, all the pirates scattered in the crackling blaze,
Sparked by vigilante forces spreading through the Meadows’ glades.
Later Snake Hill, segregated from the village on the isle,
Lent its wild, forbidding uplands for a purpose just as vile.
Debtors, prisoners, lunatics all came to dwell upon Snake Hill,
And the madhouse, prison, almshouse built there came to have their fill.
On this bleak and barren rock and in this snake pit there were thrown
All the outcasts of the county: hear their deep and desolate groan.
As with all things Secaucus and Snake Hill were transformed with age,
Sloughing off the older names and passing on from stage to stage
Through the many years of changes that have swept the Meadowlands,
Yet Secaucus still remains and Snake Hill still upon it stands.
Now the Turnpike’s eastern spur cuts through Snake Hill along its way;
No more buildings mark this Laurel Hill, as it is known today:
Bleak and barren it remains with quarries on its western side,
And the snakes that used to lurk her found another place to hide.
If you pass upon the Turnpike over Snake Hill to or fro,
Some say you can hear the Indians or the Dutch from long ago,
Pirates, lunatics or prisoners groaning on in hopeless woe,
Some say you can hear the snakes still hissing somewhere down below.
Siskakes Sickakes Sickakus Cecakus Secacus
Cecaicos Silkackes Seacaucus Secaucus
This poem first appeared in Sensations Magazine.
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John J. Trause is the author of six books of poetry and one of parody, Latter-Day Litany, the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, prose, scholarship, and visual work appear internationally in many publications, including Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative (The Red Wheelbarrow) in Rutherford, N.J., and former host/curator of its monthly reading series. He is fond of cunning acrostics and color-coded chiasmus.
