3520. BUT NOW ALL THOSE OLD MEN ARE ALL GONE

BUT NOW THOSE OLD

MEN ARE ALL GONE

'I suppose I made the explosion, turning

things so around  -  a very meticulous idea

of nothing really at all, like Springtime, of 

14th Street, in 1967. Believe this, we still

walked horses along the western edge of

14th and out to 10th Ave.; whatever's 

there now bears no relation to this at all.

We did a dairy-truck-barn-wagon-rack

feeding station, 3 times a day. A long day,

handling carts and milk cans  -  Hell's Kitchen

and Chelsea and back, London Mews,

Peter McManus's, all the rest. Those

younger boys, like killers, with their

hay-ricks and horseshit, walking out

to the Hudson's edge. Weird Puerto 

Rican families and over-weight witchcraft

fortune-telling ladies, vigil lamps and candles

all together, saints be praised!  Lebanese

seers and women who spoke (she had

eyes so black at the center hope died).

-

And now, today, someone's telling me

it's the first day of Spring  -  something new

and different in this, another, time. All their

blather and nothing at all, everywhere, 

everything the same as I dwell from the 

past and make others unsettled; but I live 

in my other time, and can only look out.

-

Like Columbus Vasco de Gama Magellan

and me, set out on the wrong open sea and

now lost to the ages - but for a name I'd be

nothing at all, (and from the horses at the

edge of 14th, we kept fires in a hundred

streetside barrels but now all those

old men are gone).'