Suite for Emily

1. The Letter Everywhere the windows give up nothing but frost’s intricate veined foliage. Just engines shrilling pocked and frozen streets wailing toward some new disaster. No bright angels’ ladders going to split heaven this Chicago instant where the pier’s an iced fantastic: spiked, the glacial floes seize it greedy like a careless treasure— marquise diamonds, these round clear globes, the psychic’s crystal world spinning in her corner shop when I passed, a globe boundaried with turning silent winds and demons. Out here the pavement’s a slick graffitied strip:There’s more to life than violence.