What Will Be

In August, the tiny metal bits fuming out
the taxi tailpipes will form a lid over the city
like a terrarium cover, and the winos will wish
the sidewalks and walls would radiate heat
at night like this in the winter instead, so they
wouldn't feel so close to death in December,
so they wouldn't be obliged to lay sleeplessly
for days over loud subway gratings just for
the warm (but foul) air rising. In August, most
everyone wise will have fled to some other
island and it will just be you and the bums
at the Met at midnight, looking for something
sacred on the steps. Especially at night,
the streets will be empty stages, and you will
walk down the middle of them with their
spotlights, actually feel a bit of cool come down
from the magnetic north, the lucky one since
you were stubborn enough to stay. You will
make entrances and exits through pools of light,
seen for a second and unseen again, down to
the Lower East Side, where roofs are low,
you can make out there trim, and even after
the sun has set, know which way the clouds
are going. The air in the city will be charged,
but not really fit for the living. The hum
all around will be bitter, and those sweet little
bags at the stoop on Eleventh will be saying,
"Come on down and cop me. Have a nice night."
Some Sundays you will listen to them. You will
gladly breeze your way back up the tenement
steps after the deals, back to the tight walls,
try not to catch your eyes in the mirror, take
the mirror down, lay it on the table. You will
roll up your bill and think of yourself as
a monk entirely engrossed in the bliss of this
moment. If you fail to notice the new moon is
on you and forget how convoluted the omens
are in the dark part of the month, you will find,
as you hunch there over the glass, that your
reflection doesn't truly reflect you, doesn't even
pretend to mimic your motions. Those nights,
he will rip off his shirt while you watch as if he
pulls his own strings. Remember, he can't
really be standing there doing what he's doing,
pointing like that at his heart. "But look at
the hole in our chest," he will mime. And you
will look at it. Clouds in there. Climactic ones.
Like the grey parts are finally choosing sides.
You will wonder how you could have missed
a hole in the middle of you so widely gaping,
how it could appear only in reflection, not
actually in flesh. You will return to the stoop
downstairs around the corner each time, as if
you never learn: What was in that shit, man?
"That shit had in it the little lengths of your life
you can't grab on to. It had in it a hole you
sucked into you when you rolled up your
ten dollar bill." What about the clouds? "Don't
lose those clouds. They will fill up your chest
if you let them." You will climb back up your
steps in a frenzy over and over again, attempt to
recover the sky each night, the consequential
sky your reflection stole. That goddamn puppet
will just shrug his shoulders from then on in,
once he knows what youčre looking for.
"Clouds?" He will say, "Find your own damn
clouds." You will be looking for them. (Look
for them.) One August night, when the sky is
violet, if you stay stubborn and do not leave,
a face will approach suddenly out of the lack of
faces in the contrasty street. There will be
a glow and a passing from amber lamp circles
back into shadows again and again. There
will be balloons caught in phone cables on
the trip up, just bobbing up and back down.
Knowing and not knowing the details, you will
rip open your shirt and fit the hole in your
chest over the clouds of the approaching
stranger's face, the ones clenched by teeth.
Uncatch the tethering strings and let yourself
be tugged along. Rise up, as if on a column
of heat, up past the tenement rooftops. Rise up
beyond the fumes and the jealousy and
the blind-drunk passing of days into the heart
of the violet night.

(1992)