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Now reading
Reading Celan in a Subway Station
I can't say whether the other commuters stand arrested
by this music - the accordion player
near the vendor's hutch - but it comes toward me, world-
sorrow drafting through the hyaline
shell of myself in thought. Reconstruction-delays,
the stench of piss and nothing
weather shaped, nothing ocean spun. Steam hammers
and dynamite tunneled out
a labyrinth, this inner ear where eros doesn't linger.
Unbeautiful in its volts and watt-hours,
its generations of mice. The wall is dinged and saccharine-
glazed where he plays in a suit.
I follow his fingers' miniscule work over a column of keys,
drawing out and in the melody
of that pleated lung. It lifts away from us climbing the stairs
past horse patrols and jewelry hawks,
past scaffolding, and saplings blown like tonophants,
past fruit stands, placards and idle
Greyhounds, the corridors of silver buildings, the thunder
with silver veins - it lifts away
because it seeks the high, lone sun. Admit his music,
Cause of All, it is handmade.