Meaning what it seems to when the day’s receipts are
counted and locked inside the store and the
keys are taken home
feeling as it does to drive a car that rides and rides like
a long, low, dark, silent streak of radio waves
just the way the hero feels in a smash-hit show
exactly like the giant in a Times Square sign making
love across the sky to a lady made of light
And then as though the switch were thrown and all of
the lights went out
then as though the curtain fell and then they swept
the aisles and then it’s someone’s turn to go
smoke the last cigarette, drink the last tall drink, go
with the last long whistle of the midnight train
as it fades among the hills
Meaning what it seems to mean but feeling the way it
does
as though the wind would always, always blow away
from home.
From Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems, edited by Robert Polito. Originally appeared in The Complete Poems by Kenneth Fearing, published by the National Poetry Foundation. Reprinted by the permission of Russell & Volkening, Inc., as agents for the author. Copyright © 1936 by Kenneth Fearing, renewed in 1974 by the Estate of Kenneth Fearing. All rights reserved.