June Fourth

Today as I ride down Twenty-fifth Street I smell

honeysuckle

rising from Shell and Victor Balata and K-Diner.

The goddess of sweet memory is there

staggering over fruit and drinking old blossoms.

A man in white socks and a blue T-shirt

is sitting on the grass outside Bethlehem Steel

eating lunch and dreaming.

Before he walks back inside he will be changed.

He will remember when he stands again under the dirty

windows

a moment of great misgiving and puzzlement

just before sweetness ruined him and thinking

tore him apart. He will remember lying

on his left elbow studying the sky,

and the loss he felt, and the sudden freedom,

the mixture of pain and pleasure-terror and hope-

what he calls "honeysuckle".