Sound Uncle in three tongues, black suits
_                                                                                            _ eating plums
by the East River.  A lifetime ago
_                                                                            _ they watched women
washing white cloth
_                                             _in a muddy stream.   Dayshift or nightshift,

_                              _ voices

floating from fire-escapes, open windows
_               _ where women lean, watching (waiting).

_                                                                                          _ Vernacular,

vocabulary,

_                              _ vestigial:  all three point
_                                                                                          _ inside this language,

to what sighs across the unintended fields.

_                                                            _ To write as if not a funeral,
but an exhalation.

_                                There are so many dead._

From a Battery Park bench, old men listen

_                                                                             _to the brims of their Fedoras.
I gather one like a gesture
_                                                               _gravity
_                                                                                             _grabs for—a book,
in his lap, nodding out,

_                                              _his reading glasses

_                                                                           _dangling from a string—