I
About to fall in love
With someone I won’t remember
A decade from now, I tie
The knot in my best bowtie
And stumble down twenty stairs
And cross ten streets of rain,
And then it all starts again…
You take this old address:
Somebody lived here once.
I couldn’t even guess
The name, the face, but once
I raced up twenty stairs
And nobody was in,
And I walked slowly down.
Is it the rain, the rain
That makes me feel again
What I thought I couldn’t feel?
The sound of the rainfall,
Hardly a sound at all.
2
Walking the wet macadam for
The alterations of the night,
I dream the dream of in between:
The sad and indecisive street
Where crippled children skate at five,
Where their wax crutches melt in light.
I see the madman’s eyes insist
On taking children home to bed
To weave of them his hair and skin,
His nest, his love, his window scene,
Until the crow at the violet hour
Comes with black songs in his throat
To sing of coincidence and murder.
3
I cherish most the libidinous moment
When, striving done, with a sensual comment,
I ransom back my golden will.
The city of stars within my skull
Stops circling. When its sky is still,
That mouth I kissed, those eyes that teared
Lie dead, and I’m King Lear out-Leared,
For though my storm was all light verse,
Its lines still shook my universe.
Concrete ribbons shine in the dark
Among the stilted lakes and trees
Slick with reflected light, the fake
Cuts, montages, and bad re-takes
Of rainy Saturday movie scenes.
My heart that once leaked gold I now
Hold back, my mistresses disappear
Into the quicksand of the years,
But I shall join them when I shed
These dollar signs that are my eyes,
This ticker tape that is my brain,
When, with my wallet full, I fall
Into the biggest deal of all.
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