Nocturne
Yours the voice, grandfather, so trained to stage and flair, you now walking past the new Grand Central Station where one-winged indoor birds must fly in pairs, you just back from performances in Winnipeg strolling past the Armory exhibit, the art so twisted you can only grin where an audience abhors confusion. You know this walk through downtown past the churches that cause a twitch behind the knee, gas light flaring the breath of lovers, electricity the sharp string that runs through your chest, the pain of her leaving you like the tremble of holding your son who will never be yours, though it’s me, the son’s son, in the next century, telling you the women in doorways, their sad eyes and seedy furs, are just what’s left of a playbill, and this place that sings all around you is the poem you walk within, the last haven, the first awakening, where your boxer’s hands, and dancer’s feet and tenor voice and crippled smile are nothing to the night, to time, to the slow dawn of apartment buildings, to the early hours a young man began to write you back who still cannot see your face.