Pedestrian

Tottering and elastic, middle name of Groan, 
ramfeezled after a hard night
at the corpse-polishing plant, slope-
shouldered, a half loaf
of bread, even his hair tired, famished, 
fingering the diminished beans
in his pocket—you meet him.
On a thousand street corners you meet him, 
emerging from the subway, emerging 
from your own chest—this sight’s shrill, 
metallic vapors pass into you.
His fear is of being broken,
of becoming too dexterous in stripping 
the last few shoelaces of meat
from a chicken’s carcass, of being moved by nothing 
short of the Fall of Rome, of being stooped 
in the cranium over some loss he’s forgotten 
the anniversary of.... You meet him, 
know his defeat, though proper
and inevitable, is not yours, although yours also 
is proper and inevitable: so many defeats 
queer and insignificant (as illustration: 
the first time you lay awake all night
waiting for dawn—and were disappointed), so many 
no-hope exhaustions hidden,
their gaze dully glazed inward.—And yet we all 
fix our binoculars on the horizon’s hazy fear-heaps 
and cruise toward them, fat sails
forward.... You meet him on the corners, 
in bus stations, on the blind avenues
leading neither in
nor out of hell, you meet him
and with him you walk.