once more I had entered the stream of things to become part of America

Somewhere on a manicured street / a poem is waiting

I have just read / a poem I wrote ten years ago. I like it.

Everyone is dead, has been dead / for a long time

A man is teaching his son to play the piano. He tells the boy, the piano loves to be touched.

I go to the closet to select a tie.
I say to myself what could happen.

The children marvel at it and the adults are proud of it.

A watch. An old one used to hanging from the black silver satin pocket of a grandfather, swinging when he walked.

Why such harsh machinery?
Why, to write down the stuff
and people of every day,

I went into the tool shops
in all innocence
to buy a simple hammer