PAR:TISAN REVIEW
Are selling out a bankrupt world-
The hammer falls-a bid! a bid I-and no one hears.
The afternoon will see us in the park
With pigeons and our feet in peanut shells.
We pick a bench apart. We brood
And count the twelve and thirteen tower bells.
What shall we do? Turn on the gas?
Jump a bridge? Boxcar west?
It's all the same there's nothing anywhere
A million guys are sitting on the ir ass
We always land
Back where we started from-a parkbench,
Cold, and spitting in the sand.
Who's handing us a runaround?
We hold our hands for sale arms brain
Eyes taught to figure accurate ears
We're salesmen clerks and civil engineers
We hang diplomas over kitchen sinks
Our toilet walls are stuck with our degrees
The old man's home no work and we–
Shali we squat out our days in agencies?
Or peddling socks shoelaces ties?
We wrench green grassblades up with sudden hands
The falling sun is doubl ed in our asking eyes.
And evening comes upon us there
Fingering in the torn pocket of our coat
The one cold nickel of our subway fare ...
Night after night in this cheap coffee pot
I
brood upon our lives.
I
rot. They rot.
The Gre ek's awakened from his dream. The dead cigar
Drops ash. He wipes the coffee bar.
He goes to fill the boiler once again.
The clock hand moves. A fly soars down
And stalks the sugar bowl's bright rim.
14
