The Eagle’s Mile

Spring-Shock

Spring-Shock All bubbles travelling In tubes, and being lights: up down and around They were: blue, red and every man uncaught And guilty.Prison-paleness Over the street between strobes Unfailingly. But no light On top of anything moving, until The last, one: one. Whoever it was switched it Dead when he saw me. Winter; not dreamlike but a dream and cars Of that. I took my stand where they were called By absent law to stop, obstructedly raging And I could not get in. All their windows Were sealed and throbbing With strobe, red and blue, red and blue And go. One pulled out of the flight Of others; pulled up and may have had back-road Dust on it red dust in a last shot Of blue. A man in a cowboy hat rolled down The window on my side. His voice Was home-born Southern; Oklahoma, Texas, Could have been. Manhandling my overcoat, I slid In there with him. Central Park South, I said, A war-safety zone; the St. Moritz. He turned up One of the streets with no lights. Into the seat I settled; black buildingsthickened Around us, high tenements flattening Into squares; warehouses now, 23 They were; maybe docks. I watched. No birds. No trash-cans. The car died Between two alley walls And froze, and a voice at last, still Out of Oklahoma, said "I want your money." We were present In silence. A brought-on up-backward thock Took place, and on the fresh blade A light alive in the hand New-born with spring-shock. It was mine At sixty. "I want your car," I said. 24 ...