Taking home the Sunday papers, late
In the dawn under the stone
Looming of abandoned business structures,
Past the slumbering airport service, the all
Night cafeteria where stray
Bits of dangerous trade, like gulls, hang out
Waiting, with eyes that fish,
You turn the lock, return, enter the known
Milieu of your feelings, bound
By the furniture, by books, two fireplaces
And that fur bunny someone dear at Easter
Brought. It’s spring; and the pages
Of the New York Times alternate
Between depressing and amusing
News. You hurry past wretched headlines
Of that bloody and interminable
Madness, war in the East, generals who bray
Their own particular neurosis into
The radar of the nerves:
The gardening page presents
A nineteenth-century sentiment, pretends
Escape through the familiar yard,
Blaze and aloha and red volcano
Climbing roses, rose of forgetfulness—
Luring, perhaps, even the cold-flat
Victim of colds and noises
To a vision of generation and response.
But swiftly riffled in impatience by
Columns of spring flowers, the sports page
Holds your attention, holds it
With half-tones that pierce the heart, smiling
Collegiates in G-strings, athletes
Poised at the edge of pools,
Or standing in rows, splendor of limbs bloom-
ing.
Remote as a Trappist, you stare
Speechless and pierced by those earnest poses,
Outspoken sinews, fresh
With sunny down. The pages are
Consumed as by fire, gossip and photos
Charred and devoured
By the restless furnace where always glows
The intimate rose of desire.
But the news, always dangerous, enters
Without knocking, the doors
Of the body fling apart, the house is taken
Over, ransacked, rutted; the occupant,
No matter how calmly
Facing the intruder with his leveled gun,
Falls to the floor, undone, at the loud report.
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