Sunlight come into the dark
garden of the radio’s
insatiability Chew up
our peaceful moments
Flowers,
before the “news”
The 2nd stage etc etc etc
The age we live in doesn’t matter
She is not at home
She is somewhere pressed into
stone
Thinking foreign thoughts
to our music
Some mixup, huh
II
She is a new cut out
Her white outline exposes the news
broadcasts
Her dissent is like that
of the music
She is an oracle
her existence,
And I am so graceless their prophet
who does not know her
The people the people
She just walk down the street
and expose them
Listens to the radio
It is not 7:30 it is night now
here in New York
City
And now the news
III
Sit erect in an ordinary chair
Her hands touching
the water
The “beauty of strength”
and movement,
Most of the people aren’t average
They ordinary
The hands put together
Behind the bookcase glass
is a copy of The Imprisoned
Splendour
Some others with brown paper covers
Look like they’re bound in gold
THE UNNATURAL LIFE
What I am is a man aloneimprisoned in white
—Aimé Césaire
You know, I keep coming back to the Crown
Delicatessen It reminds me of you
I see your happy face in every blond table, my
Red embarrassed smirk in the edges of beer
Bottles The irresponsible public hero above
The stainless steel “take out” counter,
My picture is in that cheap frame
And you are that first dollar pasted on the mirror
I have been so busy of late, translating
“Two or Three Chants” by Leopold Senghor and
Thinking about the coming revolution You know,
Something got on my mind, I had to come back
It is my lucky day I am in the Crown Delicatessen
And you are not here
The peach tree spreads on the white house
Behind your house It is a simplified heart sketched
Like a delicate jacket, its nude design
Reflecting the pack of cigarettes in the pocket
The delay of the plunger in the flooded backwater
Kitchen, the hot curses over the idea of “some ale”
And the idea of revolution is also depicted:
The cashier returns and pays for his life
Because everything is going to be everything.
My copy of Muhammed Speaks covers the table and the wind, and
The door hanging open, frightened because I am here
That I might forget these young delusions of love, afraid
As I emerge from my fashionable jacket my brain turns
Black and hateful Like a beast, your color rising in my nose
And you are raped and murdered in the usual manner.
The same peach tree in the backyard spreads on the white house
Behind your house It is a simplified heart,
See the blind aorta sketched over the vacant bedroom windows.
I should never have moved into your neighborhood!
ONE NEVER KNOWS, DO ONE
For you, I wanted to be so fancy …
I wanted to be into everything, but you understand
That. Everyday you kept telling me
“Stay loose” Did you know it was a cliché,
Maybe you were carried away, baby
By the deep, lovely fog in my face. I was
So
