New York Nocturne Poem by Bernard Henrie

The morning light a white bandage across the city.
Ceaseless stir of cars and delivered freight;
knocking lids and garbage bins.

The empty-headed yellow cockatoo rattles in his cage.
Your stubbed cigarette red from your open l ips,
a plastic Dorothy Perkins rose set in a water glass
on a saucer dish.

Swimmers tint green submerged at the 14th Street
pool; beneath a splintering dive board a beach ball
slowly sinks; a silk scarf scented with sunscreen oil
opens into claustrophobic air;

men sweat like stevedores, my wife burns gold
as the Metro Goldwyn lion, eyes traced with violet
mascara. Old people lean over sills and casements,
windows gap open like missing teeth.

Luncheonettes of disinterred fish, red meats
on decaying beds of ice, bell peppers and greens
hung from beams; sipped ice water from a pitcher,
the cleaner ready to burn.

Dusk spills quietly over the city; buses slow
and empty riders into shapeless night air.

My mind drifts, names gone, dates gone,
what remains in a year? The faint outline of things
the way a man sees without his glasses.

I haunt package stores, melancholy street lights
coming on; the silhouette of apparitions driven
from homes by heat.

The city will put me in a safe place where I can
work, my mind empty as violets in a box,
a few sanitation workers, nurses at sanitariums
and clerks in open shirts at baseball games,
shop owners and merchantmen- -a receding
cortege of well wishers saying goodbye,
elevated trains slide doors open and closed
like Morse alphabet to say goodbye, taxis
and buses say goodbye on 2-way radio code,
walking friends sift into banners of kinship.