What For?

1946 there was an overcoat
with rows of buttons fifteen dollars and two
American flags for some ungodly reason
and a slight rise in the distance as the street
went over the river for which I would have breathed
the air both in and out since I was a bellows
and one by one my lungs were ruined but I wouldn't
change my life, what for? You wouldn't know
unless you crossed the river yourself, unless you
climbed a hill and turned around twice
to stare at the street behind you, either mud
or cobblestone, and count the wooden steps
or look through the windows longingly, the houses
piled up the one below the next, the dirt
supreme, your breathing heavy, the base of a cliff
even further below, a river shining from
time to time, your mind half-empty, your teacher
a curbstone, the mountain really hill upon hill;
you know the details, the porches pulled you up,
your face turned white at a certain point, I'm sure
you walked through a cloud how slow you learned, how absurd
the goats of Arcady or the baskets of apples
in New Jerusalem compared to that.

Rapture Lost

The very thing I was trying not to see was
so close to my nose that I couldn't see anything
else, and I had to rely on a stranger to
distinguish one thing from another, and
on one occasion the edges were smoking so
and the smoke crawled to the middle in such a way
that I had to depend on smoke alone, and fog,
and clouds and steam and such to light the way,
nor did I even know the day, or the month,
nor what caused smoke to come from manholes though
temperature was my guess and gusts of wind,
and snow on the river is always my guess though any
sudden change will do and sometimes filth
alone, and as for cracking that comes in
March and sometimes even earlier and,
as we used to say, two sticks exploding
by one just touching the other or two black clouds
crashing into each other and two brass cymbals
clashing; and on the stage of the old Casino,
the burlesque house on Diamond Street I spent
my tenth grade in, one of the dancers grinding
to a drum or the drum to her, or in a show
of force my mother popping her gum, or as a
symbol of rapture lost, though it is weird
even to think of it now, and also to show
contempt for any rapture and to make you
burn cynical, he of the baggy pants,
in double time, with a fake nose, with shoes
three sizes too large, a pillow for glut, he mimics
her steps, oh lovable horror, his paper whistle
crawling up her thigh, his stogie exploding.