Again - the Trick, the Quick

It’s as if each aspect of the angle of the prism through which
I implore this New York City light – each afternoon – each day
beginning in December after three and thriving only barely
up to five – beyond which it has so immersed itself in diving into
darkness that the only possible response is blunt despair – it is
as if my only reason for existence is to bear some witness to it:
ah, but there’s the trick – the galvanizing quick – of it: today
we are again in Norway, Ibsen slowly loping down the sidewalk
humming Grieg, transmuting all to grief: some precious

legacy’s been stolen from him, and Manhattan is the thief –
secretively passing it to Ingmar Bergman – ever-present
with his private, dour and prescient eye – to indoor subway glare:
ah, there again – the trick, the quick: a bundled lady in her eighties
sits across from some young mother with whose baby
she locks eyes: a clinical investigation on the baby’s part can
be surmised: bright dispassion in the pupils, inspecting this odd
lumpy unfamiliar wrapped appurtenance of wrinkled creature,
as if it were a package on a seat. One seeks the lady’s gaze

behind her darkened spectacles (macular degeneration,
one suspects): intent and squinting, almost sweet, her face
absorbs the baby and entreats: she cannot seem to get
enough of it to eat. Ibsen, Grieg and Bergman, and a baby
and old lady in a subway car: all conspire to jar: to let you know
a little more about the glow beyond my windows now: dark
growling branches skeletally quake against the scowling tainted
pearl-white-yellow sky, whose barriers won’t break or sigh
or bend at my importunate brash pen. Tomorrow I will try again.



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