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II.

Oh

city of

almost parting

let me past your

elaborate revolving doors.

III.

Nothing but to live

               as in a hotel over

                              the caves and buried business

of wires, our rooms piled

               over the excavations

                              that run with mechanical guts.

It has the name of evil

               or city of the beast:

                              of evil; of the beast; of water

bridged, bleeding into the fabric.

               Who asks how old the caverns

                             while thundering under the river

or beneath the shivering street

               where walkers are shaken lightly

                              through cement; or how far down?

IV.

As in all hotels

apologies are easy

passing in corridors

as courteous, functional

remembering our parts

are within our powers

as in any village

pattern the support

for spontaneity

as in every art

Walk:  Boerum Hill (Brooklyn)

This walk:  lamplight strikes green

leaves every way - from beneath,

between, above, and they throw it

every way on our faces; underfoot

earlydying leaves eddy and pool

where the slates' angled beds give

gravespace

                    and the dog is eager,

not baking her paws

                                  enough signal

in one city block to illumine a nightfull

of musing

                 think (since we all move

fast and in this climate the months

wear individual costume) how no block's

pattern can be taken for granted;

that youth whose head as he slants

into the hoped-for bus's intended berth

rotates a bit my way to see if I know

if it's passed - that youth's dark and long

head is set stiffly tonight on his neck for the chill

moving air I see fall there

in the set of his head

                                   and because

the dog's eager and the newchilled air moves

he asks quite lightly a middle-aged

white lady about his bus and my careful

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