Calyx

 I.
Much above these things I remember that dry season,
the bird was the word and perfumed were the nights
with their cans
tipping music into the street as all that young talent sings
endless vocalese with bright maracas in their fists,
sung it and continues to sing it, but nobody is listening
as it leaks into our vertical experience of riding
atmospheres
feeling any decompression in the spiral
cochlea, riding up
feeling a little shift, that somehow things will be
different
this time, a little fresher perhaps, like stepping out of
your door across the threshold of morning
and being pleasantly surprised that a cold-front has moved in
during the night
and brought with it while you were sleeping a shower of rain.  But
the Minkowski Space (the poetics of which you love) and your
graceful arc

through it
flattens out as you approach your high floor
and stop --
there is a mild feeling of suspense;
air compressed behind your lips,
waiting for the door to open . . . and then
expelled,
an inaudible puff
on which some ultimate question drifts --

while all along the music soaks the scene. 

 II.
           Meanwhile night has fallen and the park lights have
reclaimed the gloaming where I sit on a bench and write this. 
Much went on that I want to tell you about.  Chiefly I noted but
did not write down how the light after sunset gradually changed as
every contrast deepened all around me.  And as this happened

and I was writing,
the page of my notebook brightened with a soft, bluish tint as if it
were freely furnishing its own light coming from somewhere
within, and behind the words which flowed from my pen. 

And it is this special quality of light which I wish to be poured into
the street scene and the ultra-modern elevator up the mile-high
skyscraper of which I have been writing
about.  Enough said about that, only do find the best
cinematographer working and place the laurels
high
upon that head!

           Vertigo? you suggested --
well, perhaps, since I have been experiencing mild bouts of it with
a summer cold the past few
days.  But what I’m really
thinking about now is a slice of pizza at Two Boots --
Care to join me?  Ice-cream afterwards?  Then home for a long
soak in the tub, and later -- type up my poem sitting on the end
of the bed, and see what we have . . .

 III.
Beyond the refuse combines of art you have crossed those
luminous margins --

now
return to life!