In August the steamy saliva of the streets of the sea
habitation we make our summer in,
the horizonless noons of asphalt,
the deadened strollers and the melting beach,
the lunatic carolers toward daybreak—
they all give fire to my new wife’s vision:
she sees me to the bone. In August I disgust her.
And her crazy mixed-up child, who eats with his mouth open
talking senselessly about androids, who comes
to me as I gaze out on the harbor wanting
nothing but peace, and says he hates me,
who draws pages full of gnarled organs and tortured
spirits in an afterworld—
but it is not an afterworld, it is this world—
how I fear them for knowing all about me!
I walk the lanes of this heartless village
with my head down, forsaking permanently
the people of the Town Council, of the ice-cream cone, of the out-of-state plate,
and the pink, pig eyes
of the demon of their every folly;
because to say that their faces are troubled,
like mine, is to fail: their faces
are stupid, their faces are berserk, but their faces
are not troubled.
Yet by the Metro
I find a hundred others just like me,
who move across a boiling sunset
to reach the fantastic darkness of a theater