by Edward Hirsch
I miss your apartment on West Eleventh Street
where I slept off the front hall in a bedroom
that would have been a closet in another city.
The plants breathed easily in their heavy pots,
but the radiators knocked all night, like ghosts
trying to reach us from the other side.
The traffic on Sixth Avenue was a slow buzz.
Someone rattled a dog chain in the moonlight
that bathed the schoolyard across the street.
Light seeped in through the barred windows.
I could hear Faith rustling around downstairs,
getting ready for work, unwilling to die.
If there is a West Village in the other world,
we will someday meet there. I’ll reach over
and hug you, which will make you uneasy.
Let’s go for a bottle of wine at the tavern
near the branch library and then stroll over
to Citarella for prosciutto and melon.
You can buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner
and explain the architecture to me. Maybe
I can stay at your place until I get settled.
-from Special Orders: Poems
