STREET MUSIC

Sweet Babylon, headphones. Song bones.

At a slate stairway’s base, alone and unready,

Not far from the taxis and bars

Around the old stone station,

In the bronze, ordinary afternoon light—

To find yourself back behind that real

City and inside this other city

Where you slept in the street.

Your bare feet, gray tunic of a child,

Coarse sugar of memory.

Salt Nineveh of barrows and stalls,

The barber with his copper bowl,

Beggars and grain-sellers,

The alley of writers of letters

In different dialects, stands

Of the ear-cleaner, tailor,

Spicer. Reign of Asur-Banipal.

Hemp woman, whore merchant,

Hand porter, errand boy,

Child sold from a doorway.

Candy Memphis of exile and hungers.

Honey kalends and drays,

Syrup-sellers and sicknesses,

Runes, donkeys, yams, tunes

On the mouth-harp, shuffles

And rags. Healer, dealer, drunkard.

Fresh water, sewage—wherever

You died in the market sometimes

Your soul flows a-hunting buried

Cakes here in the city.