Metropolitan on watery calendars
Perplexed my earliest babble. Spanningweiser
(Two doors and a delicatessen down
The cobbled hill) had moustaches like his,
But didn’t stare from the wall to watch the iceman
Leaving a spore of droplets on the stairs
And writing 10c on his waterfall whiskers
By the red fish that swam four vertical Fridays.
Metropolitan was a monument in a dream
Of watching window sills come to eye level
On all the square and numbered days and dates
That sprawled on floors, darkened under the bed.
Christian in the delicatessen fluttered
His hands like birds, made shadows on the wall.
Not Gorgonzola nor the placid cream
Loved him with such round eyes from the glass show case.
And died. Or moved away and still died later
In white collars, in the visited coffins,
Throned godlike in a round church of candles,
Disappearing under a hill of wreaths.
Like all the rest, Metropolitan sold something,
Bought something, and when time changed
Fell from the wall and someone else stood there.
A cow was one, with 10c on her udder
And forgot and forgot. Regularly as trains leaving –
A noise, a taste of soot, too many wheels –
Died, and a cow came, or BAREFOOT BOY
With 10c written on him. And drops of water
Fell on the stairs and dried. In time I loved you
Beyond reason in another country.
Suspicious even, fearing and remembering. For a while
All things were wheels, spinning and spinning,
But when any wheel stopped it was square.
Only the whirr and loss rounded it. I remember
Metropolitan on bright mornings and in delicatessens.
His whiskers leak from hearses. 10c.
Child’s prattle pencils him under wax flowers.
No matter: the cutaway undertaker knows nothing really
But buying and selling and vertical days on the wall.
To be ourselves is our own aftermath.
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