To Live In

HERE where I live, wind blows old elm trees’ shadow in the street lights,
And moon climbs to get above ragged clouds these September nights,
in the daytime, in autumn, children blow by in gusts, like leaves
Running nowhere in a wonderful hurry, the way a yellow curtain moves.
It was bitterly cold here last February, the wet snow four feet deep.
Asleep I dream more, and more strangely, than one should for sleep,
Than perhaps I would south, or west, or nearer water or in hills.
Letters come here one or three at a time. I am not near my friends.
I write them, and I write this, on a wide desk I built with my hands
To be workbench, warehouse. Daily it piles, it scatters, it spills.
There are some parts of some of the near streets I like sometimes,
Say, after midnight, or morning at nine in spring, walking my rhymes,
Some spots I think two ways about, one way a secret, but these are few.

Old, but not old enough to be taken seriously, and never will be new.
God knows better than some towns. Near the job. A good school for the boy.
I can joke the man in the hardware store. I think often I would enjoy
Selling the multiple orderly disorderly good usable things he sells.
I talk to the mailman, cop, priest, neighbors, who certainly have hells
As I have mine, who certainly hear the elms in September moonlight
And sunlight, see the snow and the children and the leaves blown bright
Down those streets we walk on so many so many times every day. We talk,

Here where I live spaced between trees in a house under the wind’s walk,
Of nothing at all, really. Ourselves. Coal. Drapes. Not much of stars
Out tonight strewn up under the local and the world sky’s high floors.
Maybe the wind, if the wind has been blowing today. Leaves, if the wind
Has brought more down on the sidewalks than usual. Not much. Our children,
How they know everybody, meeting us at the evening trains, and run, run,
Shine, care, need. How terribly we love them, but not saying what we mean.

I’d live here if they hadn’t given me the place, and they did, a present
It took years to unwrap, not quite what I asked for, either. They never are.
I say thank you, this way in a poem or somehow, and wonder what it’s for.
It’s to live in, a timeless history the leaves and trees and children make;
Their country , where I live their weather daily, yearly, for their sake.
They never question it, it is where they live. I can exult here or be hurt
As terribly as in Richmond or San Francisco. I question it in head and heart.
Their streets are wider, longer. Summer is forever, and all the houses tall.
They do not remember in this leaf-fall the last year’s yellow leaves at all.
They need not; and I need not, living the local sky and names. I am never alone
Living the moonrise, the bonfires, prices, neighbors, and always the children.