White but aging in the sun

With one or two broken columns,

Stationary yet falling

Against the tough, undying,

Green adolescence of what

Looked like a jungled growth of

Willows, hickories, & ravines

Darkening as I glanced down;

Past junkyards embracing swamps;

Past towns so poor they were not

There, except for some grief that

Made them swell a moment beside

Those tracks, only to vanish—

A few lights slipping backward—

That was my time, or no one's,

And, lost in myself as that

Train slowed, I felt my eyes look

Out & widen until they

Took in each passing station—

Widows, soldiers, a woman

In a flowered housedress with

One leg missing, all those who

Waited, & who are now like

Photographs, still, perfect,

Staring back at me with a

Vague insolence or distrust,

And not about to be changed

By books, or revolutions.

A gray tin awning kept the

Rain off their tilted faces

Then, & they had beautiful

Faces, thin or mottled by

The sudden flaring of a match

That someone held to light his

Wife's cigarette…. They have all

Disappeared into movies,

Into tract homes & armies,

Cemeteries, calendars

Yellowing in offices,

The poultry processing plants

Of the New South, where they lose

Their dignity & fingers

To dead hens & clipping shears….

That train I rode is scrap iron

Or smoke lifting in the wind….

The woman I had slept with

Will turn forty this August

In a factory shaded

By tin, dark maples, sky; she

Wrings the neck of a hen, &

Stares into its clear eye, &

Stares & stares at it until

She will never laugh again….

My home is a speck of dust

Glimpsed suddenly in a shaft

Of sunlight, & then gone in

A lost California as

I write this out, as always,

In longhand & in black ink,

Living one block from the sea.

Maybe, if I had a choice,

I would remember no one,

But walk on the frail water

Over the floating floors of

A madhouse until time sang

Inside my blood as if to

Cast my blood on wind, & brick.

But this is my life, no one

Else's, & what I notice

This morning is only this

Moth dead from its dumb, three-day

Efforts to fly against, &

Out of, a screened-in porch

In summer, when the hard spots

On each wing are still, empty,

And look as if no one, nothing,

Could ever decipher such

Markings, or rub them away….

They are a beautiful truth

Men mount behind glass, & then

Ignore, talking of trim yachts,

Taxes, a chilled white Bordeaux.

Young, I used to envy those

Men: behind their dark, polished

Limousines perfection lurked.

I thought they were born perfect.

Slowly, I began to see

Things had been arranged this way,

And finally saw that they could

Believe only in irony, Mozart,

slums, & the best schools.

Today in the news I read of

Irish soldiers starving in

The Belfast Maze, & how, at

The end of fasting, their bones,

With no muscles left to hold