Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994

From a Dream

which of course brought me to this play. But how angry I become. Now everybody is shouting at me to sit down, sit down or I'll be thrown out. The father and son have stepped offstage and come striding down the aisle side by side. They reach me, grab me by the shoulder and force me down. I scream, I scream, as if to cover the sound of the neck breaking. All through the play I scream and am invited on stage to take a bow. I lose my senses and kick the actors in the teeth. There is more laughter and the actors acknowledge my performance with a bow. How should I understand this? Is it to say that if I machine-gun the theatre from left to right they will respond with applause that would only gradually diminish with each death? I wonder then whether logically I should kill myself too out of admiration. A question indeed, as I return to my seat and observe a new act of children playfully aiming their kicks at each other's groins. From a Dream I'm on a stair going down. I must get to a landing where I can order food and relax with a newspaper. I should retrace my steps to be sure, but the stairs above disappear into clouds. But down is where I want to go, these stairs were built to lead somewhere and I would find out. As I keep walking, 67 ever more slowly, I leave notes such as this on the steps. There must be an end to them and I will get to it, just as did the builders, if only I were sure now that these stairs were built by human hands. East Bronx In the street two children sharpen knives against the curb. Parents leaning out the window above gaze and think and smoke and duck back into the house to sit on the toilet seat with locked door to read of the happiness of two tortoises on an island in the Pacific— always alone and always the sun shining. I See a Truck I see a truck mowing down a parade, people getting up after to follow, dragging a leg. On a corner a cop stands idly swinging his club, the sidewalksjammed with mothers and baby carriages. No one screams or speaks. From the tail end of the truck a priest and a rabbi intone their prayers, a jazz band bringing up the rear, surrounded by dancers and lovers. A bell rings and a paymaster drives through, his wagon filled with pay envelopes 68 | Poems of the 1960s ...