to John Logan


1 
I wonder how many old men last winter 
Hungry and frightened by namelessness prowled 
The Mississippi shore 
Lashed blind by the wind, dreaming 
Of suicide in the river. 
The police remove their cadavers by daybreak 
And turn them in somewhere. 
Where? 
How does the city keep lists of its fathers 
Who have no names? 
By Nicollet Island I gaze down at the dark water 
So beautifully slow. 
And I wish my brothers good luck 
And a warm grave. 


2 
The Chippewa young men 
Stab one another shrieking 
Jesus Christ. 
Split-lipped homosexuals limp in terror of assault. 
High school backfields search under benches 
Near the Post Office. Their faces are the rich 
Raw bacon without eyes. 
The Walker Art Center crowd stare 
At the Guthrie Theater. 


3 
Tall Negro girls from Chicago 
Listen to light songs. 
They know when the supposed patron 
Is a plainclothesman. 
A cop?s palm 
Is a roach dangling down the scorched fangs 
Of a light bulb. 
The soul of a cop?s eyes 
Is an eternity of Sunday daybreak in the suburbs 
Of Juárez, Mexico. 


4 
The legless beggars are gone, carried away 
By white birds. 
The Artificial Limbs Exchange is gutted 
And sown with lime. 
The whalebone crutches and hand-me-down trusses 
Huddle together dreaming in a desolation 
Of dry groins. 
I think of poor men astonished to waken 
Exposed in broad daylight by the blade 
Of a strange plough. 


5 
All over the walls of comb cells 
Automobiles perfumed and blindered 
Consent with a mutter of high good humor 
To take their two naps a day. 
Without sound windows glide back 
Into dusk. 
The sockets of a thousand blind bee graves tier upon tier 
Tower not quite toppling. 
There are men in this city who labor dawn after dawn 
To sell me my death. 


6 
But I could not bear 
To allow my poor brother my body to die 
In Minneapolis. 
The old man Walt Whitman our countryman 
Is now in America our country 
Dead. 
But he was not buried in Minneapolis 
At least. 
And no more may I be Please God. 


7 
I want to be lifted up 
By some great white bird unknown to the police, 
And soar for a thousand miles and be carefully hidden 
Modest and golden as one last corn grain, 
Stored with the secrets of the wheat and the mysterious lives 
Of the unnamed poor.