It’s 12:20 in New York on Friday
three days after Bastille Day and naturally
it’s the year 1959 and I’m going to get my shoes shined
because from the 4:19 train I’ll be getting off exactly at 7:15
in East Hampton and then heading straight to dinner
with people I don’t even know
As I walk the street in the muggy heat the sun starts to shine
I grab a hamburger and a beer and buy
the ugly New World Writing magazine to see what
the poets in Ghana are doing these days
I step into the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (her name is Linda, I heard it once),
for the first time in her life, doesn’t check my balance
and at the Golden Griffin I buy Verlaine’s little book
for Patsy, with Bonnard’s drawings, though I’m thinking about
Hesiod, in Richmond Lattimore’s translation, or
Brendan Behan’s new play, or Genet’s Le Balcon
and Les Nègres, but I don’t buy them, I stick with Verlaine
almost falling asleep from indecision
and for Mike I drop by the PARK LANE liquor store
and buy a bottle of Strega, then
head back the way I came down Sixth Avenue
to the tobacconist near the Ziegfeld Theatre and
absentmindedly ask for a pack of Gauloises and a pack
of Picayunes, and the NEW YORK POST with
her face on the front page
and now I’m sweating a lot and thinking
about leaning on the bathroom door of the 5 SPOT
as she whispers the song with
Mal Waldron’s piano behind her and everyone else and I can’t breathe.
