The sun is fierce over the slum of Kibera
and the iron roofs wrinkle into eyelids
sleepily tilting over damp mud walls.

I was sick, more or less, for the whole trip,
and so she got to know the pharmacists
of Venice, claiming it would help to sip

My mother wants to see me again. That means she'd like me
   to shave off my beard.
She points her thumb at the dark portrait of a bearded man,

I'll never be as handsome as my father,
singing Vivaldi, when he's seventy-five,
beneath gold domes or strolling by the water.

Hudsons and Studebakers ruled the streets, 
a crossing guard and teenagers the pavement 
when I was eight. But that was an improvement 

                                   They must not settle, the façade
shall revert to the stones.

 Tomorrow, underneath earth, again (I have foundered,
coursed) the colter, as you merge with the body of the day,
                                                           props its elbows

Between us,
I have seen the air like, to the haphazard foot, the heat
of the motion of the sun.

Edgar Pesach, the obituary writer, is on the roof of the Lincoln Plaza
Apartments. It is a deep autumn Sukkoth night.
The Philharmonic plays tonight—Boccherini, or Brahms?

We look at each other and are sad.
There’s a pear tree beside you,
(in fact you’re surrounded by fruit trees—