Sea Room

On Massachusetts Avenue

On Massachusetts Avenue Does it matter if a little drop of water panics, if a drop of water shivers over a wide street? I have felt such a thing on Massachusetts Avenue just as the crowd from the Orson Welles Theatre scattered across an intersection at disagreeable angles. I heard a woman rehearsing for an examination; her teacher held a clipboard like a tombstone to his chest. Their words were numb and stylish as they recited verse or mathematics in the twilight, something monotonous requiring a few odd pauses. I can no longer think in swerves or stillness beneath this heavy day, this blankness like a marquee for the disgraceful arts of living. Tonight the sky is an unshareable philosophy and nobody looks up after the movie, after having seen some lovers break apart; the screen, which afterwards went dark, intensified the feeling. Now the buildings lean too near, so near I might invent desires going on inside the open windows and all my unhappy souls reach out with their thimbles. I dislike these streets filled with young optimists, the amateur instructors in raincoats the texture of dollar bills. One must remember the suicides that fail like umbrellas that won't open, the autumn leaves, those too glum to fall. It's just a thought that floats up now and then like a cloud above a manhole. It's a relief the Samaritans are answering their telephones on a jingle, and other alert citizens are lifting the shutters of this city. Even the rejected, the missing, those with no connections, look up from the hard work of staying lost. It begins to rain: lice falling off the angels of God, stars infested with seed and kisses, the filthy 29 refreshment of dreams which calms all memory, a good rain in which to soak a small infected spot. It makes me think of our most wicked intentions, wine spilled down the collar of a loved one, life's cold origin in the sea, of anything grim in the context of romance. 30 ...