Tags of songs, like salvaged buttons off vanished dresses, a date Thursday a week at eight, some guilt for a cab she not only could not afford but: pretty immoment matter greets Dorabella's mounting or are they subtracting moments. "Surely should be otherwise, should stop, be thought about, have other quality than surprise. When was I last surprised?" Now more a lilac in rain than a crocus between her office and some gin, Dorabella herself encounters numerously, a not so bad looker for a tied and dyed, a moustached nun of dubious inner life, a character actress of no talent and less means, a swami-smitten dowager needling a dull chauffeur, or a hurrying woman smoothing gloves. "What would it be like to change, sharply as a traffic light?" Dorabella makes a face at life, and hurries.
From Collected Poems by James Schuyler. Copyright © 1993 by James Schuyler. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux . All rights reserved.