It is 12:20 in New York a Friday 
three days after Bastille day, yes 
it is I 959 and I go get a shoeshine 
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton 
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner 
and I don't know the people who will feed me 

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun 
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy 
an Ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets 
in Ghana are doing these days 
                                            I go on to the bank 
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard) 
doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life 
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine 
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do 
think of Hesiod, trans.  Richmond Lattimore or 
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres 
of Genet, but I don I t, I stick with Verlaine 
after practically going to sleep with quandariness 

and for Mike Ijust stroll into the PARK LANE 
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and 
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue 
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and 
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton 
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it 

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of 
leaning on the 'ohn door in the 5 SPOT 
while she whispered a song along the keyboard 
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing