The City Outside

December 11, 2008
Stirs early: ambulances pull in far
below, unloading steadily their own
emergencies, and stray pedestrians
cross nameless streets. Traffic picks up at dawn,
and lights in the skyscrapers dim.
The map of Beacon Hill becomes 3-D,
a crust of brick and granite, the State House dome
a golden bubble single as the sun.
I lived in Boston once, a year or two,
in furtive semi-bachelorhood. I parked
a Karmann Ghia in Back Bay’s shady spots
but I was lighter then, and lived as if
within forever. Now I’ve turned so heavy
I sink through twenty floors to hit the street.
I had a fear of falling: airplanes
spilling their spinning contents like black beans;
the parapets at Rockefeller Center or
the Guggenheim proving too low and sucking
me down with impalpable winds of dread;
engorging atria in swank hotels,
the piano player miles below his music,
his instrument no bigger than a footprint.
I’m safe! Away with travel and abrupt
perspectives! Terra firma is my ground,
my refuge, and my certain destination.
My terrors—the flight through dazzling air, with
the blinding smash, the final black—will be
achieved from thirty inches, on a bed.
Strontium 90—is that a so-called
heavy element? I’ve been injected,
and yet the same light imbecilic stuff—
the babble on TV, newspaper fluff,
the drone of magazines, banality’s
kind banter—plows ahead, admixed
with world collapse, atrocities, default,
and fraud. Get off, get off the rotten world!
The sky is turning that pellucid blue
seen in enamel behind a girlish Virgin—
the doeskin lids downcast, the smile demure.
Indigo cloud-shreds dot a band of tan;
the Hancock Tower bares a slice of night.
So whence the world’s beauty? Was I deceived?