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Morphine, flowers Curled on the radiator, Freed of her visiting hours, The night sounds of St. Luke’s, Of her fortune-cookie body, freed Of the whole table reading cancer: The needle trembles, breaks! Her face swells: can you hear? Freed of her! of her! My Grandmother’s Watch Your first child was my father, Old muti of Buffalo, little old child heiress, My black-eyed baby, chain-smoking goldTipped English Ovals in Heaven: your brassy Churchillian French reduced us all to mots, Even from the hardly troubled, lavendered sheets of your deathbed. I wear your coin-thin red gold watch now, Momma, Its face benign as the Archduke’s, and think of your hours, And what has gone between us, what is ours. Tonight, for instance: my tongue is thick with longing: When the children’s visit was over, the cake cleared away, What possessed your mahogany beasts to stay? On the night of my eighteenth birthday You made me a toast, saying I Was not only good at school, but musical! Pink-cheeked, black-hearted, shy, I couldn’t even look you in the eye: They cleared the cake away. The insanely steady minute-hand sweeps round, The hours go by. Somebody said dream barker 59 His Viennese grandfather Sold him his watch on his deathbed. Did you too? What can I do? O Momma, what can I Do with this gold and crystal that goes by? The Beast with Two Backs Excursion: a night, two days Away from home and neighborhood, Double-locked doors, mirrorBacked peep-holes: the neighbors. How big they’ve grown, the children! Make them walk! It’s not good, A woman, the insides! Daughters, You’ll always have them; five sons, One’s in Teaneck. Make her walk! You’ll break your mother’s back! The boat: by Christ, an excursion. Every man has seven wives, each wife Has seven children, each child has seven guns. The ladies change, they do change, in the Ladies’ Room: they wink, they shrug, they look over their backs At their colorful tails. I look at my toes In the stall where the toilet roils with the white Atlantic. Over the Times we talk about Ho, Allen Dulles, Malcolm X: take up our Signet Classics. Someone across the way from us is reading The Guermantes’ Way, Who smiles. It is a long trip to our island, 60 door in the mountain ...

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