It is 12:20 in New York a Friday



three days after Bastille day, yes



it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine



because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton



at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner



and I don’t know the people who will feed me







I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun



and have a hamburger and a malted and buy



an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets



in Ghana are doing these days



I go on to the bank



and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)



doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life



and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine



for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do



think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or



Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres



of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine



after practically going to sleep with quandariness







and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE



Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and



then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue



and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and



casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton



of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it







and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of



leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT



while she whispered a song along the keyboard



to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing





