Someone shouts “Mehr Licht!” and a hundred drunk
Berliners run for flashlights. The maestro checks
his watch, lifts the phone. Six hours later he steps from a taxi

And so it happened that the two sat down
to a contest: with the blank sky sprawling
above them, the pale sun filtering through cracks

Morning came, in buckles and lace,
asking to be held. The birds began
with sultry murmurs, their notes soon rising like sirens.

Daily when I pull my shorts
over my scarred knees, I think,
“Football has been good to me.”

The problem was, it was never quite
Expected. Days passed like water through
A sieve. To analyze: thoughts crushed like ice.

Through the blown clouds and the plate glass,
sunlight slides across the chrome fountains.
The Muzak drones like some huge machine

With a shriek gulls fled across a black sky,
all of us under the pier were silent,
my blood ached from waiting, then we resumed.

While others were discussing
the styles of metopes,
I lay down in the Temple of Zeus

Naked but for dainty shoes, garter
and a ribbon in her long red hair,
she takes him in the way history takes us in:

This was the year drought autumn never ended.
Rivers couldn’t float their barges, prairies
burned in a sulphurous caul, dead blossoms and clots