There you were, just you and your little dog
sitting on the street-corner starving
hoping against hope that a suave gentleman
in a flesh-colored Mercedes, his hair
greying a little at the temples,
would stop and say, “Why, you poor kid!
You can’t stay out there in the rain like that!
Here, wrap yourself in this chinchilla rug and get on in!”
You were already sitting at one of the tables
in the bar when I came hurrying in to meet you
and even in the light from the kitschy
red votive candles, I could see something had
happened: what could it be but love,
to make your face softer and younger,
and no make-up, and your hair all that alive?
“Well,” I said, ordering a drink, “I see
something has happened.” You smiled,
and a poem grew out of you like roses.
You nodded and looked shy, and I thought
we’d have to fight the poems off together
they were coming so fast. “Well,” I said,
“We’ve always been honest with one another
so who is this suave gentleman greying
a little at the temples?” You laughed.
Another time I was actually there, offended
by this sudden intruder into our dinner date
whom you seemed to have met because you both had
the same kind of typewriter. I did not have
the same kind of typewriter, and felt out of place
especially as I saw the poems shyly begin
to crawl past the centerpiece and invade
the tournedos Rossini.
But it’s true, you ought to be in love to write poems.
I don’t know how you and your little dog,
starving, managed to sit on the street corner
inside the second most expensive restaurant
in New York City, especially when the green evening gown
didn’t look like starving, but there was the suave gentleman
greying a little at the temples, saying “You poor kid!”
I fixed him, he asked me to order the wine.
Later on you asked him what he had thought about me.
“I don’t know,” he said, considering,
“I’ve never seen him sober.”
It’s not very sober, being in love, isn’t that great?
All of a sudden your eyes start looking demure,
though it’s fake demure, and your skin gets into the act,
and you’re very quiet, looking as if if
you wanted to you could say
things that would make speech impossible from there on,
or else you are up on your flamenco heels,
dancing the language
all around the single flower in your perfect teeth,
and words start to appear on the green evening gown,
that just as you wear it, is turning into a poem.
Well, sweetheart, I have a small dog,
you have a small dog.
We even now have the same kind of typewriter.
There are street corners all over the world
that we can sit on.
You look one way and I’ll look the other.
Hey, here come those Mercedes full of poems!
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