Heavens and Earth

Chapter 34: LUNCH AT A CITY CLUB

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About This Book

The collection assembles varied lyric and narrative poems that range from reworkings of classical myths to sharp urban vignettes and satirical sketches of modern life. Several longer pieces retell mythic episodes with vivid, imagistic language, while other poems observe city streets, public figures, and personal loss with concise reportage and elegiac restraint. Recurring concerns include desire, mortality, war, and social disorder, framed by a tension between heroic past and everyday present and rendered through formal experimentation and dramatic monologue.

LUNCH AT A CITY CLUB

(For, though not to, D. M. C.)

The member with the face like a pale ham
Settles his stomachs in the leather chair.
The member with the mustard-colored hair
Chats with the member like a curly ram,
Then silence like the shutting of a clam,
Gulps, and slow eating, and the waiters’ stare—
Like prosperous leeches settling to their fare
The members gorge, distending as they cram.

And I am fiery ice—and a hand knocks
Inside my heart. Three hours till God comes true,
When there’s no earth or sky or time in clocks
But only hell and paradise and you.
Life bows his strings! I shout the amazing tune!
... The dullest member drops his coffee spoon.