Our relationship is made problematic
by the many details of how you don’t
know me, and how I might have
immediately forgotten your name.
If you even gave it to me. I can’t
remember if you did. Did you?
This I know. You work in a bookstore
in Greenwich Village, and there is
some happiness there for you.
You trust people, which is charming.
You have some difficulty judging
just how tired is a man
when you’re talking to him. This is
a small fault, hardly worth mention.
Yet it can lead total strangers into errors
of degree. Whole sections of the city might
be meaninglessly walked in search of
a lost address you seem to think you know
something about. Do you?
You cannot abide wistfulness, especially
in you. And though you favour
the direction of your work, there is
this thing you do every evening; this walking
prayer; this stopping in at the tavern.
So that, whatever happens over the next
five, ten years, you will not end up like
them. The older ones you know. You will
not go so far in you can no longer see out.