It is hard not to look down from these heights
on the unfeeling flatlands
of southeast Hagerstown, its minor-league

A goateed sage 
chews salvia against toothache 
salivates as the new kitchen maid frosts a cake

 Like everything else they are
like nothing else—

intricate and simple:

sweetly going with death; away from
me; plastic bag extending into infinity

But in the stippled, rose velvet
Buds of staghorn sumac, in rust-
  Bright veins of briar,

“I seen it lots of times, I seen it, just from being on the street when something was going down, I seen kids get killed, a few, my buddy Jules got bucked, this gang he was down with, I mean he wasn’t even down with them when they started beefin with this other gang, but one day, it was hot, I remember it was real hot, 

In a land where you will go but from where you will never return,
Little Black Cricket, you’ll follow music inside a mountain 
with the other children. Then the rock will be sealed

Sometimes you wait a while for the bus—
the bus of happiness
probably—just now passing the fried pie hutch

We were tuned like two crystal sets to the race stations
where we heard the saxophones of the Black Zion.

In the dark we crossed the borders of the Caucasus

Today we are going into shelter,
we are going underground to discover the passage that leads
to the next world. We will be happy there,
or we will not worry about happiness; we will make neat designs