Refuge

Even as you climb the tenement stairs

you are picturing the disturbances in the dust

behind every door,

the variations of lust and despair

in kitchens too small

to actually cook in. Some dog

barks bitterly and stops. A cry,

some useless interjection, comes

from a blank place in the wall.

Outside the day goes brilliantly

and obliviously on, like a neighborhood genius

who simply won't shut up. Here in the dim

disturbance of your passage -a visitor

showing his new lover

where he once lived-you are already finding

the obscurity you fled. It's still

here and it's no different from what

you keep around the house where you live now.

Only there from the doorway

from which wafts the stinks of rancid blood and

acid burns, does the gleam of

an anonymous eye hint of

another, vaster and more deeply correspondent

affair, some colloquy you have just missed

but should have been here for, that

would have cleared your name.