5959. IF I EAT TODAY

IF I EAT TODAY

Now is the moment to carry Thom Paine in his

chair. Let him sit there; in another two weeks

he'll be dead. I am working on another angle:

here, here, I am due at Pfaff's. It is years later,

and now years later again. On the train platform

the conductor has on his hard-peaked trainman's

cap, and the engineer comes by looking like a

lumberjack. The train waits while they compare

information. A snort, then, of electric noise, and

an air-brake clatch, and we are slowly gone.

I feel as if riding through time.

-

If court were today, I'd need to produce you as

evidence. Have you be served yet my subpoena?

You seem you must attend, for that means 'under

penalty'. (I am distant now, and in a strange land).

When Poe lived at 85 Amity Street, so too did I.

-

There was a time, yes, when every desk 

proudly boasted a heavy, black telephone. 

Everyone needed wires  -  a consular world to 

be sure, and soon the stagecoach man was never 

out of touch. Telegraph and telephone, as such. 

Now the young have taken over  -  the stupid young  -  

and all I hear are their mouse-like voices. 

If I eat today, I shall surely dine alone.

-

Next door to Coleman House, and Pfaff's below

it, in the cellar, once stood the grand Stuyvesant

Institute  -  oh palace of culture that! Wickedly

guarding the faces of slime in its day defined. 

('Through me, forbidden voices'). I lean against an

old wooden building there : now to see only the

coach driver approach me. I calmly inquire of his

health and day. ('Carry me when you go forth over

land or sea  -  for this merely touching you is enough,

is best, and, thus touching you, I would silently sleep 

and be caressed eternally'). Oh Walt Whitman,

you are still my friend.