The time is coming when it won’t be maintenance.
The time is coming when it won’t be minimal.
I walk with my long-dead dog up a hill.

The ringing telephone sobs to be picked up and when I do 
It’s someone I love but don’t see anymore,
Calling from her car to ask 

I live a life of appetite and, yes, that’s right,
I live a life of privilege in New York,
Eating buttered toast in bed with cunty fingers on Sunday morning.

At seventy-seven I reached my prime.
But seventy-eight was also absolutely great.
And then came fab seventy-nine and continuing to climb.

Afternoon’s hundreds under the Citicorp on the platform-
feverish underworld over the molten core of the world.

And upstairs: rock stars, dictators,
complexly drawn women in armor,
the dead, the poor, and so and so—

And your death taught its debt
who escaped your life?

For now labor must be done
by the poor from the planets of sleep,

though who would kick beauty in the teeth? (O bitter
      aftertaste!)

Sheen on your hair on the back of your book
jacket. Intellect’s steel, perhaps I said.
My friend and teacher until we did not talk,