In a siren voice the months are singing "Mood Indigo"

I must wash their aftertaste down with a quart of Lethe

for all the optimism I lost this winter. On shelves the

alphabetical friction of names irritates. I move letters



on the fridge, start a new work with "Every image is

a sun and you’re hot." Often it happens a patient will

announce he is going home, that he doesn’t like being old

and sick anymore. But at the first quiver of oncoming



doubt, after dumplings and beer at "Joe’s Shanghai,"

you can’t help but put the saw to my loftiest bough:

"We will climb no further." That’s when I retreat

like Keats to a balcony, splashing claret into an eyecup



of visionary charm, looking back at your posture and

haute command as you wrecked a kitchen for a sublime

risotto. Then slowly, as in a decade of Melvilles, I get

over the hump, like any miserable schlump.