Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a
hotel room
above the
alley
where
poor men poke for bottles;
making
love in the sun
making
love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making
love while the boys sell headlines
and
Cadillacs,
making
love by a photograph of Paris
and an
open pack of Chesterfields,
making
love while other men- poor folks-
work.
That
moment- to this. . .
may be
years in the way they measure,
but it's
only one sentence back in my mind-
there are
so many days
when
living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits
like a train on the rails.
I pass
the hotel at 8
and at 5;
there are cats in the alleys
and
bottles and bums,
and I
look up at the window and think,
I no
longer know where you are,
and I
walk on and wonder where
the
living goes
when it
stops.