well I was incubating for a while
there on the corner of ellis
in an exemplary bit of prairie gothic
with a sweet view of the china-hole of the future.

god, somebody kept at the boiler
all february, that crust of a month!
my theory: twas an impetus
towards the good ole state of nature.
for fever bloomed, sweat streamt.

most made the most of it,
swapping sick & genes,
but I would not quit my lair;
there I daily tuned the strings
that the night-heat had flattened
fifty, sixty cents.

such were things
when I fled the breedery,
a flight bold & all the bolder
for its lasting three days.
at the end, a mile down: a room
implicated with the supremely
modest name of Broadview.

well, down fifty-seventh I went
& went some more
with slow tread for the ice
saddled front & back
& sometimes round the neck
with as much as my knees could bear,
something like a train stood on end –
& naturally I got to know my track.

first the gate, next the bus-cross
& the seminaries, surely five
of those fellows. of course:
the book-cellar & the primary school.
do you know the sign out front of that
once gravely gave me to understand
that Aeschylus was not afraid
of shitstorms?

then there’s the med, parkfacing
(careful! those flowers stain pages).
blackstone’s always got a puddle
that seems somehow as solid
as the Church of the Scientist there reflected.
I mean – they’ll have to condemn it!
here’s O’Gara’s dollar-books, hallo,
one-upped by Powell’s, whose are the same,
but free. Florian at that time was not
shuttered by deli paper, & above Salonica
(whose soup-list is a compelling argument
against the very notion of combination)
was a reading-room. yes, one of those.

by the tracks I tend to think
“I’d like very much to live
by the tracks; I tend to think
that, don’t I, whenever I end up
by the tracks.” then the fronting park
opens up, may well the only spot
in these parts that seems sensible
of the seasons. it does me kindness.
& the museum with its lawn
all shitty feathers or more generously,
feathery shit. would that my broad view
had included it! but my new window
looked only on windows.

well, I’d unshoulder what I’d brought,
& put it in quarter-order,
then make off quick back
to replenish the load at the hot source.
but I took, for a change, on these
light returns to fifty-sixth
(a street well-appointed & wide
enough for half a car, in the absence
of the customary magicking)
in favor to retracing my
fifty-seventh steps.

so I suppose one who sat at the med
that day, all day, window-facing
(after the gracious bum’s example),
must have witnessed the historic migration
waterward of a tribe all men, all like,
with bowed backs, eyes at odds, & swollen jaws,
with the same gait, hat, & silence,
different only in burden
(pillows, houseplant, synth)
& altogether apparently far too
enthralled by the pain of home-loss
to walk together – but instead
singly, with about fifty minutes between ‘em.