sun went down looking like the eye of God

behind icy mist and stark bare trees

inside the dim empty cinema 2 guys in leather

jackets glance at each other and shiver

"they never built these places with winter in mind"

out the window down the gray road you can see

old walled monastery

now become a barracks for the paramilitary police



i saw an old lady's face once on a Japanese train

half lit, rich and soft luminosity

she was dozing straight upright head bobbing almost imperceptibly

wheels were playing fast in 9/8 time

her husband's friendly face suddenly folded up in a sneeze

across the straight a volcano flew a white smoke flag of surrender



in a Roman street on a full moon night

i was sick and there was a young cop in a circle

of yellow light

as we drew near he snapped the safety off his

machine pistol and slid a trembling finger

to the trigger

i wanted to say something calming but couldn't

catch his eye

he didn't want contact -- he was trained to

see movement

"well don't shoot me man i'm a graceful slow dancer

i'm just a dream to you not real at all"



i wonder if i'll end up like Bernie in his dream

a displaced person in some foreign border town

waiting for a train part hope part myth while the

station changes hands

or just sitting at home growing tenser with the times

or like that guy in "The Seventh Seal" watching the

newly dead dance across the hills

or wearing this leather jacket shivering with a

friend while the eye of God blazes at us like

the sun...



(Autumn '79 Pavia, Hokkaido, Paris)