By the Waters of Babylon

(Boston, winter of 1959-1960; age 22. I have suppressed the names of some real people, and corrected the name & serial number of Dina Barzilai.)

quiet
hear the alarm clock
    beat its way off in good time toward its appointed coming
          at 8:00 this day when i shall rise
               and waste more time
hear ------ scratch his ass
    remember -------
          saying with what joy he looked into the john after having
          the dribbly shits for 2 bad days
          in east anglia
          and saw at last a hard turd grinning at him
------ is kind
------- is sane
--------- is good
    blest be their blinding sanity
hear the water
    the smoothed out boundary between cold and warm
    moves down the pipe,and microbes
          swimming against the stream,notice it
hear the good people on the street below
    who laugh,and drink,and fuck their bloody world
to raytheon,and death

it is winter now in jerusalem,and it may be
    that a flake of snow from time to time
    settles on the brown skin of the construction worker
    and melts with the muscle's heat
          that puts the honest iron in concrete
it is winter now in london,and the rains
    wash the blown kiss into the sewer
          to southampton,maybe to suez
          where,being picked up as a mild case of the flu by any
               number of colonels
          and transmitted to a haganah commander
          it might end up near haifa,where it started
it is winter now in boston:ropy snow
    mingles with the dogshit in scollay square
    around the edges of the traffic
    under the friction of whose wheels
    the glistening street reflects the coca cola sign
          impressing upon mine eyes a sickening jazz
          of barfcolored light
but the city is never quiet:
the sky is white with stars,and the radios
    play those distinct tunes that merge
          into each other,and the night
    the nameless tunes that fill the lives of the faraway people
    what are they playing?
          is it "you gotta have heart" for those that haven't gotta
               have it
          or "dina barzilai" for those that have it
          49635-1
          miles and miles and miles of fart
    well,i guess it's you gotta have heart for me
    not much chance of dina anyway
    besides,i'd rather be buggered on
          an accelerating motorcycle in the midst of a discussion
          on the mathematics of masochism
have you any advice,doctor?
hold on tight