It is just getting dark as the rain stops.

He walks slow and looks, though he’s late. It’s all

Muted. It’s like a stage. A tender light

In the street, a freshness. He wonders, a

Funeral?: at uncertain intervals,

Up the block, the corner, small, old women

Walk home with soft lamps, holding them with love

Like children before them in the May night.

A few people move down East 10th Street. They

Do not look at these ladies with their lights

Blowing in the rain-wet airs by the stores,

Their ancient hands guarding their ancient flames.

Three boys race out of the YMCA

At the corner, carrying the brief god-

like gear of the runner. Two jackets hunch

Over two kids. There is high, choked laughter.

The third wears a sweater, black as his head

Lit with the wet. They sprint across the street,

And are gone into a tiny candy shop

Half underneath the walk. A dialogue

As the jackets and sweater cross leaves him

One clean phrase, “tomorrow again.” He grins.

He turns, pauses by a store with small tools

Held in half spool boxes in the window,

With beads, clocks, one hand-turned coffee grinder

And way in the back, a wooden Indian.

Now he stops a girl he feels he knows. He

Asks her where he’s going, gives an address. 

She teaches him, lifting her arm up, rais-

ing a breast inside her poplin raincoat.

He listens carelessly. He wants to see

The long, full hair that gives form to her scarf

Of a wine and golden colored woolen,

Some turns of it loose about her forehead

Like a child, some lengths of it falling at

Her back as she walks away, having smiled.