Daylight Saving

The clocks go back. As the light fails
Down on the path by the Metro line
Where yellow leaves have drifted overnight
Against the wire fences, men walk with dogs
To show they are not murderers.
Neither here nor there, trains pass
On other lines. They pull the grey air
Inside out. The dog spooks easily,
Knowing what humans will do. 

I stop to listen where there used to be
A house you couldn't find except on foot.
The kids demolished it, and creepers claim
Its blackened bricks. The smell
Of years-old burning makes me homeless,
But the story is not mine, no more
Than this unhappy accident of place
That lies beyond a frontier no one drew
And yet stands undisputed. Here 

At world's end, nothing intervenes,
And if a place could know me, now it does.
A step too far, beyond the light
Shed by the streetlamp at the bridge
And things are as they are, dark air
And ruination, far-off trains, the dog
Who, like his foolish master,
Cannot tell which way to turn.
Invite me in, then, emptiness.

SEAN O'BRIEN

TLS Oct 18 2013

           

           

MAN IN SLICKER

A man is talking to himself again.
He strolls down Broadway in the rain.
He's hidden in a slicker, so he's yellow, obvious.
A rainy day on Broadway looks like Auschwitz, more or less.
He has a fancy accent so he isn't Jewish, is he? 

He walks down Piccadilly, more or less.
Not exactly talking to himself, more like quiet shouting.
He's a hotdog wearing yellow mustard spouting
A fancy accent but he isn't English.
In fact, he'd sink England in the North Atlantic with relish. 

Down to Eighty-second Street and back each day,
Ten blocks or sometimes more each way.
Like waking from a dream and you realize you're shouting.
But you're happy and you're walking.
I'm quite aware I'm making faces. 

I'll look good in my black chalk-stripe suit,
Savile Row astride a red Ducati racer
For a fashion magazine, a fancy joke
Done morbidly, my tongue sticking out like I'm dead.
What if they remove my tongue from my head? 

Talking, talking, talking, at my desk, in silence,
Putting my head in the open mouth of my MacBook Air.
Being alive is served to the keyboard raw or rare.
The poem eats anything, doesn't care.
I sing of Obama's graying second-term hair. 

It's me-I'm talking to myself again.
I'm walking down to Eighty-second Street
To Barnes & Noble to buy my own book. Blue sky. Summer day.
The Broadway center strip of bushy trees
Is a green fluorescence in the summer breeze. 

Let the homeless pick through the trash-
It's a heavenly day in heaven nonetheless!
I find filth to eat and I beg-
And pretend I'm the Shah of Iran.
Anything but I mean anything to sing you a Broadway song! 

I'm talking on my cell to Galassi on his-
We're lepidoptera fluttering our way to a matinee at the opera.
It's a drastic new Don Giovanni.
An absolute swine gloriously sings to his harem of flowers for hours
And asks, Who has a more beautiful name than Mitzi Angel?

We dine, sipping flowers and wine.
Winged butterflies of refinement, each on an assignment.
Galassi's is to inhale Montale and Leopardi
And cross-pollinate the language of the tribe.
Mine" harder to describe.

-Frederick Seidel

NYRB Nov 7 2013