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.