the dry goods dealer / sits in his shop and eats smoked / herring from the can

like the silent aisles of food / his head is neat and dreamless

his work is the line / that leads him from yesterday / to another night

and when he comes home alone / he melts the ice off his bed

the shoppers whisper / one to another about / a man without hands

who lay face down in the road / soaked through with oily water

the early spring rains / fall on the roofs like applause / at sein theater

while the clouds stand hard and black / with cold smiles of discretion

the musty smell of / fish permeates the beard of / the dry goods dealer

to him it might as well be / gardenia or rose soap

he wants a quiet / capable man to date but / always has no time

before the cafes wind down / and the city falls asleep

the dead man is said / to have smiled as though he were / out for a coffee

while the light from his yellowed / eyes made bystanders shiver

can a good pair of / hands drop off like the sound of / a passing metro

can a dead face be read like / a book of philosophy

the dry goods dealer / investigates the snowy / hairs of his mustache

he remembers when they were / black as birchwood from the fire

summer days lying / on the seashore - the hot sun / and a willing friend

he leaves all of it outside / in the rainwater to freeze

the latest play at / sein is about power plant / workers who have cats

everyone likes to see / inside their small urban lives

they leave laughing and / have a whiskey and soda / beside the canal

the night is thick with spice and / the sleepless people pair off

above the black clouds / the moon lights up another / city made of glass

and the wind howls a weird song / like the hot breath of a man

but the one who walks / alone hears only the rain / on the old tarred road

he is still listening for / the insects that eat the dead