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A half-view of greenery, cut off by blinds. Pinecones hanging in pairs, like testicles. Brain balls, someone once said at a pool. We were in it, looking up at a guy getting out. This angle replicates that one, but the view is more animated, less peopled. The sky’s changeups are reminders that this will not drag on forever, despite the ergonomic ease afforded by the seat first devised for geriatric care, then stripped down. It’d seem rational: if the elderly spent their days in recliners, so could others, dot-commers, say, properly incentivized. And at least there is no symbolic logic, with eliminands and retinends. No lasting premises either; we will be priced out of any area. No sooner than the conclusion is accepted as consequent and part and parcel of this universe of discourse, we’ll come to realize the sense in having new places to leave. This is the chair’s democracy. Particularly this one, with its form-fitting mesh forsaking foam and padding, which cause overheating and cloud the sitter’s judgment. It’s recyclable, and that matters. Still, the office chair’s revolution is an oxymoron.

for Francis and Barbara 1 Among the high-branching, leafless boughs Above the roof-peaks of the town, Snowflakes unnumberably come down. I watched out of the attic window The laced sway of family trees, Intricate genealogies Whose strict, reserved gentility, Trembling, impossible to bow, Received the appalling fall of snow. All during Sunday afternoon, Not storming, but befittingly, Out of a still, grey, devout sky, The snowflakes fell, until all shapes Went under, and thickening, drunken lines Cobwebbed the sleep of solemn pines. Up in the attic, among many things Inherited and out of style, I cried, then fell asleep awhile, Waking at night now, as the snow- flakes from darkness to darkness go Past yellow lights in the street below. 2 I cried because life is hopeless and beautiful. And like a child I cried myself to sleep High in the head of the house, feeling the hull Beneath me pitch and roll among the steep Mountains and valleys of the many years That brought me to tears. Down in the cellar, furnace and washing machine, Pump, fuse-box, water heater, work their hearts Out at my life, which narrowly runs between Them and this cemetery of spare parts For discontinued men, whose hats and canes Are my rich remains. And women, their portraits and wedding gowns Stacked in the corners, brooding in wooden trunks; And children’s rattles, books about lions and clowns; And headless, hanging dresses swayed like drunks Whenever a living footstep shakes the floor; I mention no more; But what I thought today, that made me cry, Is this, that we live in two kinds of thing: The powerful trees, thrusting into the sky Their black patience, are one, and that branching Relation teaches how we endure and grow; The other is the snow, Falling in a white chaos from the sky, As many as the sands of all the seas, As all the men who died or who will die, As stars in heaven, as leaves of all the trees; As Abraham was promised of his seed; Generations bleed, Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

my husband thinks we have too many chairs in our house. I know we need more, my friend has enough chairs, many many more than we have. I told my husband: chairs, picture frames — they are the same. when my friend and her husband have talked about looking for a different place to live, one with space for the families of their six children, he says, "but I want this view." on the interior walls, facing away from the sea, are paintings of this view — "well, it's not exactly our view, but close" — taken somewhere on this small stretch of land near the lighthouse, the painting of their house really of the one next door, a corner of their house visible in the background (receding in the perspective). in the Whistleresque painting, the house next door is a train rushing forward through the night fog. our daughter believing, acting as though (she believes) she can control the universe externals, personal at dinner, after three days joking of this (its urgency, extravagant tampering, how she commands and navigates, exhorts us: parents, boyfriend), I say, too bluntly, "so — have you thought of modifying your behavior?" crude, hurt her, she cries, is embarrassed, she says, thinking the others in the restaurant have heard, "I know you don't mean to, but you're hard of hearing, you talk too loud." reading garden books the last week, immersed in gardens, in words, in visions of gardens deer ate all the roses, the night Lily left the gate open her husband wants this view, there is a place down the road, much larger, it has the same view (nearly). he wants to move there, but the houses are entirely different, the new one very formal, "a real house," my friend says. she is reluctant to leave her perfect — the perfect she created — structure. the chair, the frame, matter as much as the view they arrange. ashamed, aware I've cut too close "your behavior" jokes are dismissable/admissible this was criticism. I want to apologize but do not explanation       self-righteous (remember an earlier fight, when she lived with us, her shouting, "why do you always have to be right?" me shouting, "because I AM!") or sinking, return the authenticity (not authority) of others’ visions, seeing New York thirdhand at the moment of being there firsthand with my friend. my my interpretation of her memories — she’d lived there — inextricable from my own immediately perceived visions. descending into the subway on an August day, the steps down to an aqua pool filled with Perrier. everyone breathing in the airpockets the bubbles made, cool and floating under water. they rose from the subway refreshed. her dream became my strongest image of the city later, we go to the movies, split up at the multiplex, the men to a macho flick (we see the previews of their film/ glad we missed it). she and I sit in the last row — she doesn't want anyone behind her — spatial boundary preemptive, compelling throughout the movie she tells latecomers the two seats beside her are taken. I talk to her about imagining her aura I want to give her the house she wants. I love her so. I want her to know. like my mom reading about newborn babies in the hospital, cribs ribboned in blue and pink, "as if that's not enough," she says, "the cribs are labeled: 'I'm a boy!' 'it's a girl!' " looking out from oneself: I and thou. (bowing acknowledgment in that "thou": blessing.) looking out for oneself: I and it. imagining her aura — huge and wide — so if someone sits near — it won't matter — she'll still have personal space — "I know, I know" — driving her Delta 88 — and she squeezes my hand — her father out fishing on a boat in the afterlife (according to the psychic) — something about wine — your mother — tell her — "my mother doesn't drink" — tell your mother to stop whining. it is not one view. from the same chair it’s constantly changing, coloring, waving. from different chairs, more so. gradations. water, clearest of notices that we are (the world is) in constant motion. putting forth first: we are? the world is? world/we. moving out from where we are/moving in from out there. the ferry crossing back and forth to the mainline, to “America.” this place called simply, by islanders, “the island.” THE island. there is no other frame or chair, no need for description, the world is circumscribed. For Becca, Betty, Marie

And both the girls cried bitterly (though they hardly knew why) and clung to the Lion and kissed his mane and his nose and his paws and his great, sad eyes. Then he turned from them and walked out onto the top of the hill. And Lucy and Susan, crouching in the bushes, looked after him and this is what they saw. — C. S. Lewis , The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Tonight we will function like women. The snow has gone away, the ice with its amniotic glare. I clasp my sister’s tiny hand. We will not turn away Though spring, spring with its black appetite, Comes seeping out of the earth. The lion was sad. He suffered us To touch him. When I placed the bread of my hands In his mammalian heat, I was reminded That the world outside this world Is all vinegar and gall, that to be a young girl at the foot of a god Requires patience. Timing. The White Witch has mustered her partisans. Because I am fascinated by her bracelets strung with baby teeth, I will remember her as the woman Who grins with her wrists. From my thicket of heather I note that in her own congenital way She is pure, that tonight she ushers something new into the world. I cannot stop it. I cannot stop it just as in that other place I could not keep the planes with their spiked fires from coming. Though in this closed realm the smell of camphor is overwhelming I have nothing but my hands to use In ministering to the dead. Here too My hands must suffice. Hush now while I testify. They are shaving him. The corona of his mane falls away Like pieces of money. In the moon’s milk light Her bangled wrists grin as she raises the blade. Something is diffused. In whatever world he comes again There will be women like us who choose to.

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade—not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole, Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death, I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again,) Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d, My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form, Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet, And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket, And buried him where he fell.

Because he was as hard to handle As truth, which we equate with light, Go somewhere dark and hold a candle For Alan Sullivan tonight.

A heron-like species, rare visitors, most recent records referring to winter months . . . very active at dusk. —Guide to Irish Birds A sobering thought, the idea of you stretched there, bittern, under a dark sky, your exposed bones yellow too in a ditch among cold stones, ice glittering everywhere on bog and river, the whole unfortunate country frozen over and your voice stilled by enforced sobriety — a thought more wrenching than the fall of Troy because more intimate; for we’d hear your shout of delight from a pale patch of watery sunlight out on the mud there as you took your first drink of the day and now, destroyed by thirst, you lie in brambles while the rats rotate. I’d’ve broken the ice for you, given an inkling; now, had I known it, we might both be drinking and singing too; for ours is the same story. Others have perished — heron, blackbird, thrushes — and lie shivering like you under whin-bushes; but I mourn only the bittern, withdrawn and solitary, who used to carouse alone among the rushes and sleep rough in the star-glimmering bog-drain. It used to be, with characters like us, they’d let us wander the roads in wind and rain or lock us up and throw away the key — but now they have a cure for these psychoses as indeed they do for most social diseases and, rich at last, we can forget our pain. She says I’m done for if I drink again; so now, relieved of dangerous stimuli, as peace with my plastic bottle of H 2 O and the slack strings of insouciance, I sit with bronze Kavanagh on his canal-bank seat not in ‘the tremendous silence of mid-July’ but the fast bright zing of a winter afternoon dizzy with head-set, flash-bulb and digifone, to learn the tao he once claimed as his own and share with him the moor-hen and the swan, the thoughtless lyric of a cloud in the sky and the play of light and shadow on the slow commemorative waters; relax, go with the flow.

The Reverse Studious of Ease, and fond of humble Things, Below the Smiles, below the Frowns of Kings: Thanks to my Stars, I prize the Sweets of Life, No sleepless Nights I count, no Days of Strife. I rest, I wake, I drink, I sometimes love, I read, I write, I settle, or I rove; Content to live, content to die unknown, Lord of myself, accountable to none.

The village life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; What forms the real picture of the poor, Demands a song—the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, if e'er such times were seen, When rustic poets praised their native green; No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse, Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse; Yet still for these we frame the tender strain, Still in our lays fond Corydons complain, And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal, The only pains, alas! they never feel. On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, If Tityrus found the Golden Age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? From truth and nature shall we widely stray, Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains. They boast their peasants' pipes, but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; And few amid the rural tribe have time To number syllables and play with rhyme; Save honest Duck, what son of verse could share The poet's rapture and the peasant's care? Or the great labours of the field degrade With the new peril of a poorer trade? From one chief cause these idle praises spring, That themes so easy few forbear to sing; They ask no thought, require no deep design, But swell the song and liquefy the line; The gentle lover takes the rural strain, A nymph his mistress and himself a swain; With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer, But all, to look like her, is painted fair. I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms For him that gazes or for him that farms; But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace The poor laborious natives of the place, And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray, On their bare heads and dewy temples play; While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts, Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts: Then shall I dare these real ills to hide In tinsel trappings of poetic pride? No, cast by Fortune on a frowning coast, Which can no groves nor happy valleys boast; Where other cares than those the Muse relates, And other shepherds dwell with other mates; By such examples taught, I paint the cot, As truth will paint it, and as bards will not: Nor you, ye poor, of lettered scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O'ercome by labour and bowed down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruined shed? Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour? Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Lends the light turf that warms the neighboring poor; From thence a length of burning sand appears, Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, Reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye: There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, And to the ragged infant threaten war; There poppies, nodding, mock the hope of toil, There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, And the wild tare clings round the sickly blade; With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, And a sad splendor vainly shines around. So looks the nymph whom wretched arts adorn, Betrayed by man, then left for man to scorn; Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose; Whose outward splendour is but folly's dress, Exposing most, when most it gilds distress. Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race, With sullen woe displayed in every face; Who far from civil arts and social fly, And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye. Here too the lawless merchant of the main Draws from his plough th' intoxicated swain; Want only claimed the labor of the day, But vice now steals his nightly rest away. Where are the swains, who, daily labor done, With rural games played down the setting sun; Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball, Or made the pond'rous quoit obliquely fall; While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong, Engaged some artful stripling of the throng, And, foiled, beneath the young Ulysses fell, When peals of praise the merry mischief tell? Where now are these?—Beneath yon cliff they stand, To show the freighted pinnace where to land; To load the ready steed with guilty haste; To fly in terror o'er the pathless waste, Or, when detected in their straggling course, To foil their foes by cunning or by force; Or, yielding part (when equal knaves contest), To gain a lawless passport for the rest. Here, wand'ring long amid these frowning fields, I sought the simple life that Nature yields; Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurped her place, And a bold, artful, surly, savage race; Who, only skilled to take the finny tribe, The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe Wait on the shore and, as the waves run high, On the tossed vessel bend their eager eye, Which to their coast directs its vent'rous way, Theirs, or the ocean's, miserable prey. As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand, And wait for favoring winds to leave the land; While still for flight the ready wing is spread: So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign, And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain; Who still remain to hear the ocean roar, Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; When the sad tenant weeps from door to door, And begs a poor protection from the poor! But these are scenes where Nature's niggard hand Gave a spare portion to the famished land; Hers is the fault, if here mankind complain Of fruitless toil and labor spent in vain; But yet in other scenes, more fair in view, Where Plenty smiles—alas! she smiles for few And those who taste not, yet behold her store, Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore, The wealth around them makes them doubly poor. Or will you deem them amply paid in health, Labor's fair child, that languishes with wealth? Go then! and see them rising with the sun, Through a long course of daily toil to run; Like him to make the plenteous harvest grow, And yet not shard the plenty they bestow; See them beneath the dog-star's raging heat, When the knees tremble and the temples beat; Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er The labour past, and toils to come explore; See them alternate suns and showers engage, And hoard up aches and anguish for their age; Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew; Then own that labour may as fatal be To these thy slaves, as luxury to thee. Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide; There may you see the youth of slender frame Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame: Yet urged along, and proudly loth to yield, He strives to join his fellows of the field; Till long-contending nature droops at last, Declining health rejects his poor repast, His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees, And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease. Yet grant them health, 'tis not for us to tell, Though the head droops not, that the heart is well; Or will you urge their homely, plenteous fare, Healthy and plain and still the poor man's share! Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel, Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal; Homely not wholesome, plain not plenteous, such As you who envy would disdain to touch. Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease, Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please; Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share, Go, look within, and ask if peace be there: If peace be his—that drooping weary sire, Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire, Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand. Nor yet can time itself obtain for these Life's latest comforts, due respect and ease; For yonder see that hoary swain, whose age Can with no cares except his own engage; Who, propped on that rude staff, looks up to see The bare arms broken from the withering tree, On which, a boy, he climbed the loftiest bough, Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now. He once was chief in all the rustic trade, His steady hand the straightest furrow made; Full many a prize he won, and still is proud To find the triumphs of his youth allowed. A transient pleasure sparkles in his eyes, He hears and smiles, then thinks again and sighs: For now he journeys to his grave in pain; The rich disdain him, nay, the poor disdain; Alternate masters now their slave command, And urge the efforts of his feeble hand; Who, when his age attempts its task in vain, With ruthless taunts of lazy poor complain. Oft may you see him, when he tends the sheep, His winter-charge, beneath the hillock weep; Oft hear him murmur to the winds that blow O'er his white locks and bury them in snow; When, roused by rage and muttering in the morn, He mends the broken hedge with icy thorn: "Why do I live, when I desire to be At once from life and life's long labour free? Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away, Without the sorrows of a slow decay; I, like yon withered leaf, remain behind, Nipped by the frost, and shivering in the wind; There it abides till younger buds come on, As I, now all my fellow-swains are gone; Then, from the rising generation thrust, It falls, like me, unnoticed to the dust. "These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see, Are others' gain, but killing cares to me; To me the children of my youth are lords, Slow in their gifts but hasty in their words: Wants of their own demand their care, and who Feels his own want and succors others too? A lonely, wretched man, in pain I go, None need my help and none relieve my woe; Then let my bones beneath the turf be laid, And men forget the wretch they would not aid." Thus groan the old, till, by disease oppressed, They taste a final woe, and then they rest. Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day; There children dwell, who know no parents' care, Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there; Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed; Dejected widows with unheeded tears, And crippled age with more than childhood-fears; The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they! The moping idiot and the madman gay. Here too the sick their final doom receive, Here brought, amid the scenes of grief, to grieve, Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow, Mixed with the clamors of the crowd below; Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan, And the cold charities of man to man: Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide, And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride; But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh, And pride embitters what it can't deny. Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance With timid eye to read the distant glance; Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease To name the nameless ever-new disease; Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain, and that alone, can cure; How would ye bear in real pain to lie, Despised, neglected, left alone to die? How would ye bear to draw your latest breath, Where all that's wretched paves the way for death? Such is that room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud is all that lie between; Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day. Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; For him no hand the cordial cup applies, Nor wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes; No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile, Nor promise hope till sickness wears a smile. But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls. Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe, With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go, He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and physic in his eye; A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills; Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy bench protect, And whose most tender mercy is neglect. Paid by the parish for attendance here, He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer; In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies, Impatience marked in his averted eyes; And, some habitual queries hurried o'er, Without reply, he rushes on the door: His drooping patient, long inured to pain, And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain; He ceases now the feeble help to crave Of man, and mutely hastens to the grave. But ere his death some pious doubts arise, Some simple fears, which "bold bad" men despise; Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove His title certain to the joys above; For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls The holy stranger to these dismal walls; And doth not he, the pious man, appear, He, "passing rich with forty pounds a year"? Ah! no; a shepherd of a different stock, And far unlike him, feeds this little flock: A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task As much as God or man can fairly ask; The rest he gives to loves and labors light, To fields the morning and to feasts the night; None better skilled the noisy pack to guide, To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide; Sure in his shot, his game he seldom missed, And seldom failed to win his game at whist; Then, while such honors bloom around his head, Shall he sit sadly by the sick man's bed To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal To combat fears that ev'n the pious feel Now once again the gloomy scene explore, Less gloomy now; the bitter hour is o'er, The man of many sorrows sighs no more. Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow The bier moves winding from the vale below; There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, And the glad parish pays the frugal fee. No more, oh Death! thy victim starts to hear Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; No more the farmer gets his humble bow, Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou! Now to the church behold the mourners come, Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; The village children now their games suspend, To see the bier that bears their ancient friend: For he was one in all their idle sport, And like a monarch ruled their little court; The pliant bow he formed, the flying ball, The bat, the wicket, were his labours all; Him now they follow to his grave, and stand Silent and sad, and gazing, hand in hand; While bending low, their eager eyes explore The mingled relics of the parish poor. The bell tolls late, the moping owl flies round, Fear marks the flight and magnifies the sound; The busy priest, detained by weightier care, Defers his duty till the day of prayer; And, waiting long, the crowd retire distressed, To think a poor man's bones should lie unblessed.

(To Saul Touster) I. January 22, 1932 Could a four-year-old look out of a square sedan (A Studebaker Six in currency green With wooden artillery wheels) and see a scene Of snow, light lavender, landing on deepening blue Buildings built out of red-violet bricks, and black Passersby passing by over the widening white Streets darkening blue, under a thickening white Sky suddenly undergoing sheer twilight, And the yellow but whitening streetlights coming on, And remember it now, though the likelihood is gone That it ever happened at all, and the Village is gone That it ever could happen in? Memory, guttering out, Apparently, finally flares up and banishes doubt. II. May 29, 1941 Tring. Bells On grocers’ boys’ bicycles ring, Followed, on cue, By the jaunty one-note of prayers at two Near churches; taxi horns, a-hunt, Come in for treble; next, the tickety bass Of chain-driven Diamond T’s, gone elephantine And stove-enamelled conifer green Down Greenwich Avenue. Out of the Earle I issue at half-past thirteen, Struck, like a floral clock, By seasonal Manifestations: unreasonable N.Y.U. girls out in their bobby socks And rayon blouses; meek boys with their books Who have already moulted mackinaws; Desarrolimiento of New chrome-green leaves; a rose, Got, blooming, out of bed; and Mrs. Roos- Evelt and Sarah Delano Descending the front stoop of a Jamesian House facing south against the Square, the sun— Who, curveting, his half course not yet run, Infects the earth with crescence; And the presence Of process, seen in un-top-hatted, Un-frock-coated burghers and their sons And daughters, taking over All title, right, and interest soever In this, now their Property, Washington Square. III. December 29, 1949 The Hotel Storia ascends Above me and my new wife; ends Eight stories of decline, despair, Iron beds and hand-washed underwear Above us and our leatherette Chattels, still grounded on the wet Grey tessellated lobby floor. Soon, through a dingy, numbered door, We’ll enter into our new home, Provincials in Imperial Rome To seek their fortune, or, at least, To find a job. The wedding feast, Digested and metabolized, Diminishes in idealized Group photographs, and hard today Shunts us together and at bay. Outside the soot-webbed window, sleet Scourges the vista of Eighth Street; Inside, the radiators clack And talk and tell us to go back Where we came from. A lone pecan Falls from our lunch, a sticky bun, And bounces on the trampoline Of the torn bedspread. In the mean Distance of winter, a man sighs, A bedstead creaks, a woman cries. IV. July 14, 1951 A summer lull arrives in the West Village, Transmuting houses into silent salvage Of the last century, streets into wreckage Uncalled-for by do-gooders who police The moderniqueness of our ways, patrol The sanitation of the urban soul. What I mean is, devoid of people, all Our dwellings freeze and rust in desuetude, Fur over with untenancy, glaze grey With summer’s dust and incivility, With lack of language and engagement, while Their occupants sport, mutate, and transform Themselves, play at dissembling the god Norm From forward bases at Fire Island. But— Exception proving rules, dissolving doubt— Young Gordon Walker, fledgling editor, My daylong colleague in the corridors Of Power & Leicht, the trade-book publishers, Is at home to the residue in his Acute apartment in an angle of Abingdon Square. And they’re all there, the rear- Guard of the garrison of Fort New York: The skeleton defense of skinny girls Who tap the typewriters of summertime; The pale male workers who know no time off Because too recently employed; the old Manhattan hands, in patched and gin-stained tweeds; The writers (Walker’s one), who see in their City as desert an oasis of Silence and time to execute their plots Against the state of things, but fall a prey To day succeeding day alone, and call A party to restore themselves to all The inside jokes of winter, in whose caul People click, kiss like billiard balls, and fall, Insensible, into odd pockets. Dense As gander-feather winter snow, intense As inextinguishable summer sun At five o’clock (which it now is), the noise Of Walker’s congeries of girls and boys Foregathered in their gabbling gratitude Strikes down the stairwell from the altitude Of his wide-open walk-up, beckoning Me, solo, wife gone north, to sickening Top-story heat and talk jackhammering Upon the anvils of all ears. “Christ, Lou, you’re here,” Whoops Walker, topping up a jelly jar (“Crabapple,” says the label, still stuck on) With gin and tonic, a blue liquid smoke That seeks its level in my unexplored Interior, and sends back a sonar ping To echo in my head. Two more blue gins. The sweat that mists my glasses interdicts My sizing up my interlocutor, Who is, I think, the girl who lives next door, A long-necked, fiddleheaded, celliform Girl cellist propped on an improbably Slim leg. Gin pings are now continuous. The room swings in its gimbals. In the bath Is silence, blessed, relative, untorn By the cool drizzle of the bathtub tap, A clear and present invitation. Like A climber conquering K.28, I clamber over the white porcelain Rock face, through whitish veils of rubberized Shower curtain, and at length, full-dressed, recline In the encaustic crater, where a fine Thread of cold water irrigates my feet, To sleep, perchance to dream of winter in The Village, fat with its full complement Of refugees returned to their own turf— Unspringy as it is—in a strong surf Of retrogressing lemmings, faces fixed On the unlovely birthplace of their mixed Emotions, marriages, media, and met- Aphors. Lord God of hosts, be with them yet.