dog days

flags droop
leaves wilt

elderly Chinese ladies in the park perform their tai chi, apparently unwilling to perspire

but the heat withers me, and the dogs
--they pant, pant, pant and drool

sweat rolls down my arms
plops into the dust

July 20, 1969 (Central Park)

The police have taken to guarding
The high rocky places in the park
Nightly explosions in the subway
Have left a taste of a coal miner's
smoking fears

The sky is a dirty red fog;
The night drips over those trudging
through wet grass
To celebrate
Where monster spotlights
Strain and scream at the moon

A studied intoxication
A calculated stupor working itself
toward climax;
Vague gypsies, traces of witches,
Noisy lunatics are quarreling
over
a lovely corpse in the mud

Little sister, they've landed men on the
moon--
What obscene dance shall we make
To celebrate this rape?

leaving Goshen

the radio wakes you, a sudden ugly hallucination
but outside the Super 8, it's not as bad as you had feared

a breeze, wind in the trees, some birds, and the landscape
though flat and sordid, is not immediately threatening

trudging with suitcase along the gravel shoulders of US 33
you curse the land and the humidity, the lack
of civilization, imagination, and brio, until
a sympathetic pickup truck driver offers you a lift
to the Walmart Supercenter

after all, Abraham pleaded with God not to blast
Sodom and Gomorrah if there remained only one
hospitable person; you met one this morning

and then there is the Negro trolley driver
and the colorful Amish out on dates

but the Amish have stark raving German pride
in their eyes, that air of righteous superiority
they know they're traveling among Babylonians
whom God has cursed, damn it

rolling out of Goshen on the interurban trolley
just the start of the long trek back to civilization
trying not to vomit, I curse Goshen too

if an all-merciful God chooses to pluck a few souls
from damnation, from the coming brimstone
then that is the prerogative of the Almighty