Collected Poems

BEFORE A CASHIER'S WINDOW IN ADEPARTMENT STORE

Herons fly low, too. All it will take is one old man trawling one oar. Anybody can follow a blue wing, They don't need my candle. But I do. BEFORE A CASHIER'S WINDOW IN A DEPARTMENT STORE i. The beautiful cashier's white face has risen once more Behind a young manager's shoulder. They 'whisper together, and stare Straight into my face. I feel like grabbing a stray child Or a skinny old woman And driving into a cellar, crouching Under a stone bridge, praying myself sick, Till the troops pass. 2. Why should he care? Ele goes. I slump deeper. In my frayed coat, I am pinned down By debt. He nods, Commending my flesh to the pity of the daws of God. 3Am I dead? And, if not, why not? For she sails there, alone, looming in the heaven of the beautiful. She knows The bulldozers will scrape me up After dark, behind The officers' club. Beneath her terrible blaze, my skeleton Glitters out. I am the dark. I am the dark Bone I was born to be. 148 4Tu Fu woke shuddering on a battlefield Once, in the dead of night, and made out The mangled women, sorting The haggard slant-eyes. The moon was up. 5I am hungry. In two more days It will be spring. So this Is what it feels like. SPEAK To speak in a flat voice Is all that I can do. I have gone every place Asking for you. Wondering where to turn And how the search would end And the last streetlight spin Above me blind. Then I returned rebuffed And saw under the sun The race not to the swift Nor the battle won. Liston dives in the tank, Lord, in Lewiston, Maine, And Ernie Dory's drunk In hell again. And jenny, oh my Jenny Whom I love, rhyme be damned, Has broken her spare beauty In a whorehouse old. She left her new baby In a bus-station can, SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER 149 ...