named a piece for
That strange handsome drunken
college kid at the foot
of the bandstand
in Minton's
Or was he a sailor some murderous
accomplice after the fact
football star smalltown has-been
Buddhist Catholic
polymorphous junkie
Who was the first to understand
I guess he must have thought
That it must take
Une negre blanc (please pardon my joual) or some
philosopher
To understand that when the mode of music changes,
the walls of the city shake
(That's Plato, paraphrased probably, see there's nothing
new under the sun) there's nothing now under the sun
there's now nothing under the sun
DIg that
To understand that America is but a dream
Has always been but a dream
So rushing in his sleep to the points of that skewed flawed diamond
At immigrant New England the first conquered capital
lonesome foghorn city the mount of shame and reckoning
and all the graveyards eternal Larimer Streets and
little mother's houses in between
To see them all before he is awakened . . . . by
So often the dreamer mistakes the cause of his disturbance
Awakes and assigns to the first noise heard the reason
For what vanished with the dream
So many sounds thereby unrecognized
What keeps you awake is not always what woke you
When there's no more territory to light out for, then the real
restlessness begins
And I saw that afternoon on the train (just a paying passenger
two stops past yours)
That the judgment had come to pass
This is the way we will live now
Arming ourselves against imaginary foes lending to others
so they may put up a fight, who can dream when
you got to work
The diamonds were empty the landfills converted to green
rolling hills the parking garages filled to closing
the schools starved and abandoned to immigrants' kids
invisible airplanes flying where the music used to rise
Above it all satellites in the heavens reading the newspapers
wherein mothers are condemned as whores for the miracle
of their nature wayfarers are hounded from their paths
Wherego the poor in spirit in the global marketplace?
Camps are good but a bomb is quicker
Who could have compassion on it now?
Will you deny your daughter in heaven?
