for Arthur Erbe

Anyhow, no one lives to tell the tale. And what
I am sweating out in my tower will not be pertinent
to what you are reading and thereby composing.

A warm wind moves over broken Warsaw.
This is Chopin, a prelude to my sitting here
in undershorts with a toothmug of tepid gin,
the window fan drawing the purple and orange
night sky of Pittsburg into this box of thought.
The tight room. The shell-pocked courtyard.
The page where your eyes flit, preoccupied.

You, and only you, will make this work. You
and your jackdaw hoard. Clamorous pebbles
under the waterfall. Cautious boots on the staircase.
Clammy pews and spittle and dusty velvet.
Encyclopedias that flake apart like biscuits.

No, nothing is parallel. No, no angle is right.
Every room translates Chopin into its own décor,
its own tongue. Over the blasted masonry
and the row of faces, their proud resistence,
the camera pans. Tendrils of morning-glory
coil between the toes and climb the bruised shins,
grey thighs, fingering the groin, the breastbone,
entering the mouth. Entering this gaping window.

That in the pre-dawn twilight—touchy, frangible—
a wild-haired courtesan straddles my waking
I have no need to record. You have no need to be told.