It’s raining, it’s pouring,
And your heart is sad,
But you’re not about to say it.

Our life stories are scary and droll,
Like masks children wear on Halloween
As they go from door to door

Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.

Bald man smoking in bed,
Naked lightbulb over his head,
The shadow of his cigar 

You’ve been paying visits
To that hunchbacked tailor
In his long-torn-down shop,

Sat up
Like a firecracker
In bed,

That was the year the Nazis marched into Vienna,
Superman made his debut in Action Comics,
Stalin was killing off his fellow revolutionaries,

It pains me to see an old woman fret over
A few small coins outside a grocery store—
How swiftly I forget her as my own grief

Bad luck, my very own, sit down and listen to me:
You make yourself scarce for months at the time
Making preparations for some new calamity,

The name of a girl I once loved
Flew off the tip of my tongue
In the street today,