Poem in New York Poem by Gregory Orr

The derelict who lives on our street
looks like Whitman as a young man;
this summer he slept discreetly
in a greasy bundle of rags by the alley
trash cans. Now autumn's here, and at night
he sprawls in the warm, sugary gust
vented from the candy store

*

I sat on the wharf's splintered pilings
and watched the corpse
pulled from the water. Its face glowed
the blue of lapis lazuli.
Two policemen wrapped the swollen
thing in plastic sheeting,

heaved it into the truck
and slammed the green door shut.

*

I listened with the other young poets
that day in the classroom
as Auden, wrinkle-skinned, unresponsive,
recited word for word and essay he wrote
thirty years before: "Your task
is like a mining engineer's—
how to get buried ore out of the ground?
and you can't use magic."
How many times
I've met my double on a New York street—
always he smiled and held out his blue hand
in greeting,

Who, if not he, bends to lift

the rotting body out of the Hudson? Who steps lightly
over the sleeper at rest in his redolent cloud?