17

 
The city below the terrace groaned with the roar
of many engines, and sometimes Hobo grew
confused.  Were there many birds, or only a few,
or one?  Or none at all - only the anger

 
of the wind, tripping a rippling mimicry
in the branches?  The roar was alien, inhuman...
or was it he himself who had lost some touch
of companionable union, some - democracy?

 
Yet... it felt O.K. to be absent, sometimes.
He could watch the cubiform city ratchet upward
into turbulent rondure... and he wondered
at things, as they rose to their occasions,

 
like slanting cranes, with unselfconscious grace.
(Sometimes, lifted over itself, the forest rested
for a while : a cresting, counterpointed
sarabande, trailing a surf of firs.)

 
The spindle in the trees turned silver, a last
bright flare (vortex of each hobo passage).
Just as Teddy arose at the end (the adage
of the jade tree on his brow) and cast

 
an eye toward his unbalanced friend.  He felt
how much they had suspended from each other
(as Ulysses S. must have, in the memoir-
shiver of his battles won).  Lionheart

 
he was, and dungeon too - a Lazarus
among the tombs, attentive to the zone
buried in that nutty chest of his (someone's
cicada, cricketing).  It muttered, Paradise.