Summer Vertigo

Twilight ushered in still so late

By the madwoman, barefoot, asking

Anyone for a cigarette.

It is a street of figures

Mostly dressed in white-no one

You know. Or why, when the large dark

Car brakes beside you, a voluminous

Globe of hair, a woman, should

Turn and flash a smile your way,

Cool waves of jazz spilling over

The dash-before that space drives on.

There is simplicity just

In a streetlight and a little joke

In the bottle that rolls aside

From your step. Too many voices,

Too many echoes. Are looking to be

Amused; have forgotten other

Evenings lost in the same search;

Are general and lack subjectivity.

Willfulness takes you underground:

A labyrinth filled with victims, dressed

In several second-hand myths.

To barrel through darkness at 2 or 3 G's,

Venom coursing through the third rail

And poured into the flywheel at a screeeeching

Halt: you do the stations and take the cross-

Town shuttle to Grand Central-nothing.

Then, head of a man, body of a bull.

Cold sweat beads the chrome fixtures

Of a virginal urinal... .

Back on the tracks. Through asperities

To Astor Place, then to the Bleecker Street

Stop: reborn to the world.

Still the perpetual cruise of cars,

Solitude broken on the wheel of Cadillac

Or Ford. Now, follow a gray form

For a half-dozen blocks, in the rhythm

Of your planless plan; so the night deepens

In a spurious threading of streets,

Though you know your behavior

For thin and strange by the blanket

Disdain of all their stares. The remembered

Ideal of being young and footloose

Comes up and shakes its head:

Bottom-lit mask as a lighter grates,

Flares into life and then dies. . . .

Paisaje de la multitud que vomita-

So much to contemplate,

Head drooping downward, amazed

At how stars billionize in the pavement.

A crack in the concrete

Propels you on to link it up

With an old and fatal dawn.

Ah, there's the madwoman again,

Slumped against the wall, feet

Still bare, and taking a rest

So far denied to you.