Classic Poem

We sit in the wind gloating on our lump
of sorrow. Then we move along sidewalks, I mean through forests,
under trunks, walls, cranes, signs, branches and windows
singing, O susurration
of leaves, wires, groins, high iron, moon
on scaffolding. But over there —
I like it better over there than here where we are:
there they stomp around a trash fire
to insultingly stupid honkings that litter good silent air.
Sometimes they too are quiet and melancholy as we are here.
Sometimes one of them or a whole family will close the door
and commit suicide in simple despair.
But that is sometimes. Now, how thin the sorrowful
painted face of the petrified moon here has become
that over there is the bell of a trombone:
its high white note and black mellow note
hurt alike and as long as they are not dead
in last spasms they live.











From Poetry Magazine, Vol. 188, no. 2, May 2006. Used with permission.