Lights out, my arm entwined in yours, you say
goodnight and float a wistful little thought
that’s like a fairytale: It’s break of day.
Now, I’m a princess, you’re a prince! You caught
your breath, then whispered something more. I bought
quite willingly into that sentiment—
We’re young again! Sweetly as it was meant,
it haunted me. I couldn’t say why till
I grasped what it portended: days of hurt 
erased. The drunken-sailor nights, dawns filled 
with payback dread, erased. And (given the sort
of water torture that is debt) the curt,
tormenting voice of prudence quieted,
my partner in crime, my partner in bed.
                        

She had come to that state where the horror of the universe
And its smallness are both visible at the same time….
			—A Passage to India

A stew of sky has choked the 19th floor;
the town clock boiled to ochre, a dying sun.
Drawn through the day’s last maze at half-past four,
you bound from shock to shock until…you’re done

with lab-rat patience. Gloomily, you note
the seedy architectural collage,
the urban cut-and-paste, abandon hope
for more sublimity than lurks in hodge-

podge enclaves where our helter-skelter lives
just map behaviorists’ old sweet/sour ploy—
“avoidance and approach,” in psycho-jive—
the gauntlet run for paychecks and the joy

of schoolboy freedom, as you thread the gray-
ing streets to reach the light at the end of day.