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Southbound train,
     under a comet.
Thinking of you,
     seraphic poppa.
I was sick the night you died,
     lying on a friend's floor,
     hollow stomached,
     bloody-eyed,
ear full of your words.
Words of mystic Paterson,
     maniacal Manhattan.
     Waves drowning the Battery,
     Staten Island.
     Engines crushing the streets of the Bronx.
     Whistles shrieking the deathsong of cities.
Of the body,
     temple of sensation.
     Turbid glans,
     ruby cap of May.
     Youth's sexy masses
     in Summer's bare-assed glory.
Of America,
     cold mother.
     Delta of nations,
     many tongued, many fingered.
Words of Naomi,
     Nipple of madness and vision,
     liquid seed of your
     Buddhist, Jewboy accents.
A lot to say
     to a buzzcut boy,
     tongue thick with southern heat.
I never got to tell you,
     about roads bled red,
     pines ominous with rain.
     Melting fields,
          where hundreds died in seconds,
          thousands in minutes.
     
Fields grown fat with grass,
          children running barefoot over the dead.
Not a word
     about my brother and me,
     pockets stuffed
with imaginary minnie balls and arrowheads.
Barbecue scenes,
     with hogs strung up for cutting up
     and black fisted razors keeping time with eyes and teeth.
No meat for the Synagogue.
     The serious talk of salesmen,
     trading salutes with bellies and cigars,
     over sweet iced tea.
     Labored breaths
     of tractors, cultivators
     and business coquetries.
Now,
     forty-odd years later,
          a comet signals your exit.
Cars stop.
Doors open.
I mount the platform.
Its tiles run red.
     Train pulls out,
     rear light winking,
     like an old man's eye
     or a cupped hand waving.

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