pied-a-terre

the return to the little room
-- studio, efficiency, or cubicle --
solitary cell in the brain

blundering home at odd hours
you miss the address, or the building's
down, burnt out, demolished

or the elevator refuses to pause
at your floor, and you wander out in the night
the mesh, Manhattan street matrix

it was the decade of the solitaries
long-distance hollow-eyed striders
up and down the wounded bleeding avenues

at last, guided by some god's hand
you stumble home to the little room, safe place,
asylum, undisturbed, it endures in time

narrow bed, desk, and lamp, and in the drawer
the deck of suicide cards, your old poems
cryptographs line the shelf

these days, at times, barbarians camp on the floor
these wild young artists, festooning the walls
arrogant, misguided, they disturb your space

on the shelf they've set up their own poems
dressed up as books, you take one down
decipher it and read to the airwaves

at first it seems garbage, wild pencil scrawls
howling, bad language, no form
the volume dissolves in your hand

then reclining you recite aloud
to your amazement the old bards gather
chanting greybeards join in

at first a low hissing, then a hum
voices echo, hit the cosmic stride
the volume dissolves in your mind

in the little room form is not different
from emptiness, emptiness not different
from form -- form is the emptiness

your mind clears and moonlight
plays over the foot of the bed
then autumn returns, its clarity, leaves sigh
angels blow horns over Harlem

full moon, moving again, it slides
and with it your mind, to the west
over the cliffs, to paradise, down
to the river, on the rocks of time