I am a foul weather friend.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings to my skin until morning,
nor the braying of wolves reminds me
that the moon can’t sleep either,
nor a woodpecker completes all the work
there is to be done and rattlesnakes still their rattles,
despots loosen their grip, and the world
sleeps like a cistern at long last full of water.
Now I come to you wrapped in rags
too worn to carry your ink.
My blistered feet require your care.
I am as the child untouched by illness
who is angry to be ill;
I rage
at the putrid snow and the weak sun
that won’t melt it, at all that cruelly
persists
though there are few
that wish us harm,
for are not most fundamentally
good?
Will they not open their door to you,
show you the way when you
are lost?
How then did it come to this?
I have found refuge in your library.
A mob that does not know my name,
that knows only that I am in a library
and must therefore suffer at its hands,
soaks the grass with gasoline,
but I do not run:
I am reading
by light of the fast-rising flames
the works
of the immortal poets.
Foul Weather Friend
