Through this window
I've seen Lady Lilian float past
a few weeks after she left me
in the weightlessness of utter nothingness
in October 1976,
and I saw Annsi through the same glass,
slowly swaying by, like a duck,
in the summer of 1986,
nine months pregnant with an author
and Doctor of English Literature,
me hiding behind months of dark, flaming,
anticipatory inconvenience


...and I've seen innumerable ladies dance by,
imagining them in ridiculously intimate predicaments

In short, this is the lookout of choice
for the exotic sightings of femme fatale femininities
and the matter-of-fact crucials of life passing
in a cinematic staging of all that mattered and didn't

I try to stay cool
while little motors everywhere
sound like swarms of bees
or looming Lancaster bombers over the Channel 1944

I look shamelessly
at the young woman minding the store
all day,
rushing back and forth in the café,
picking up dishes and delivering sandwiches,
showing off her tasty ass
as she leans and flexes
from morning till night,
appearing, afterwards, shining
through starving men's intense masturbation,

and that is as it should;
just the order of things

I get horny too, time and again,
as sure as the swell of the ocean,
and there are so many women in here
and so few men,
you might suspect we're in fact on the Polish side
of the Polish-Ukrainian border

My day is a room
of voluntary work spaces
that I find myself sitting through

Kumlins is a work space
for people with lap tops,
though not nearly as busy
as the coffeeshops of big towns

Now it's my present work space,
with pencil, sharpener and notebook, plain

The notes I take
become gray traces
of wandering thoughts

...and it's not long until everything
that doesn't yet exist
doesn't exist anymore