LONELINESS IN LINDEN

after Wallace Stevens

The fear and the hum are one.

Monuments of show gumming the works

Until the weather grows tired of the people

And the people grow tired of the dance.

Jamais, jamais, jamais, again.

The measure of the town against a dampening sky

Cobbling together six million tunes

Into more than the tones tattoo

Or their scrambled mosaic forecloses.

And if the fume and the hope

Are one? My monkey, from ’49

Steps as silent as those songs

Along the cratered dark

Where Jews do Jewish things

No one pretends to understand

Or are they pilgrims on this night

When the fear and the hum are one?