Incident on Fifty-second Street

"I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid."


It was Christmas Eve 1939.
W.H. Auden was waiting for a sign.
"Been to China, been to Spain.
Lord, lord  don't want to do it again.
The Christmas star rages with its usual vengeance.
Lord, lord  give me a little transcendence."

Lord, lord that's what he prayed
At the end of a low, dishonest decade.
Drinking alone.  Then who comes in?
My Uncle Joe.  Auden buys him a gin.
They fall in love.  There is a back room!
Boom a lay Boom a lay Boom a lay Boom!
They went back to the bar and unless I miss my dates.
Auden wrote "In Memory of W.B. Yeats."
Showed it to Joe who kept on drinking.
"I like this place" is what he was thinking.

Coatesville 1

 

Driving into Coatesville past Our Lady Queen of Peace
My old friend Tommy says “We still got that at least.”
Fifty six years old.  Years of junk and speed and crack.
Tommy says, “Dooley, you know sometimes

I think I’m not coming back.”
Pulled into Gaby’s.   Drank and talked till way past dark.
Tommy says, “Jesus didn’t die alone. You can read it in Luke or Mark
But sometimes I can’t hardly breathe I feel so alone.”
I say. “Tommy, I got to leave.”  Roll back stone.

 

 

Coatesville 2

 

“It’s a hard world,” my Dad says.

"It's a hard world and you can't win.
You're always going out

Even when you think you're going in.
It's a hard world.  It's a hard world, Dooley."
I know Dad.  I know it truly.
91 years old.  Can't see.  Cant' hear.  Can hardly talk.
Dad says. "You got to leave.  Pick up yourself and walk."