Three Scenes

Abandoned Asylum, Northampton, Massachusetts

I stroll the grounds, as a grander era Would have phrased it, and listen for lost screams. In the town below, other cries are blasting The grace of this shy spring afternoon. I’m here to recall what I never knew.

Broken glass trills softly, wood weeps rot. I stand on tiptoe and stare through begrimed windows. The flannel nightshirts are gone, the leather straps And the tubs in which to take cold baths. A whole hymn-singing century is mouse shit.

I listen for the ghosts of regimens. I listen For bright eyes throbbing with dolor. I listen for the taciturn, the bleary, the mopey. I sit in a shadow and wait for the manna of grief. Here, the engines of betterment roared

With iron understanding. Here, righteous fear Practiced on the bent hearts of gasping bodies. Here, the most awful beauty bloomed like lilies. Behind the main building sumac is growing like crazy. Lord, I pray to the bricks and splintered casements, lighten me.

Crawford, Nebraska

March 25th. Driving at night Through western Nebraska we are suspended In the cushioned quiet of a wet spring snow— Nickel-sized flakes plummeting deliberately. No wizard of enchantment or Caesar or king Or khan could have commanded such a pure spectacle. The inky sky is a heaven and in no hurry.

We park and start to walk through a little town Whose name we read on the post-office lintel. It’s late and still, and the windows are mostly dark. The innocence of sleep is palpable And you say that small towns are like elegies, That they bring up the sharpest feelings of frailty.

We walk past snowy cottonwood trees And street signs and pickup trucks. The snow will vanish By late morning and so will we. We stop in the middle Of a sidewalk and stick our tongues out and taste The cold sky, the houses, the low calm breathing Of children and men and women, the teeming Wordless drift that subdues everything.

Hotel Overlooking Central Park

Looking down you intuit God’s conceit: Everything afar but visible, Pulsating yet arithmetical: Late afternoon whistling into evening, Autos halting, then careening.

A fraud, neatness, whether jacked into Poems or humming the rosy chords Of palliative memory.

Hardy souls stride toward Their next errand while marveling At the heaven of tall buildings. God, again. Something should buttress them and you,

Something mighty yet tonic, something Easeful yet thrilling. Inside and out, Bright lamps arise. Contemplation dims. You tug at curtains, though no one can look in.