“Ja, da gibt überhaupt nur: Nein.”
It mattered. Of course it mattered.
And if the pressure were in the present,
instead of all the past—how florid it would be!
There was that girl, quiet and dirty, always smoking
at the end of the counter at Veselka, or else
eating borscht, dipping the spongy challah
and then shoving it quickly into her purple mouth,
quickly, like the condemned. And she was not me.
It is curious, when I call that landscape up
the colors are all cool; blue and grey, so much grey,
and lavenders and the cooler greens, and even
the occasional red is chilly. No yellow at all.
The summers were hot without ever being sunny,
because that was one of the rules.
You followed the rules, until you learned
that it was better to impose them, and then
you made them up. For a time, I had blue-black
hair, shiny as a housefly, and black wooden glasses.
Was there no man? Yes, there was, and he was
large and dark and funny; he rang like a telephone
that rings, spitting, during thunderstorms.
There were other men, and some women, too,
because someone had to be laying claims
and also objecting quietly, sidelong, like mentholated smoke.