That love of hospitality 
                                                 & the old Irish 
passion for food and drink            (good food, 

The big claw takes its angle
and drives down hard,
shivering Kezar’s concrete bleachers

Smoking a cigarette in a classroom
a woman is copying sentences from
a book called Our American Way of Life

A large unpleasant woman
Is chasing a songbird around the kitchen
With a broom shouting

Junked hypodermics made it hard to walk
along the Tiber by the deserted, grand
sandstone embankment of the temple block.

It’s a story as famous as the three little pigs:
one evening a man says he is going out for cigarettes,
closes the door behind him and is never heard from again,

But beautiful is the dog lost,
once headed east, then later

in the dark south. But
beautiful is the cold

What kind of a mentality 
causes men to commit suicide in their air-conditioned glass
      boxes? 

Warm abstraction, glimmer and fruit
Of progress, hope and comfortable psychology
We forgive the promises of love, drugs and dieting

The smothering heat of a July night
Squats in a second floor bedroom
And doesn’t move despite the desk fan’s