hello to the unimaginative and dim ways of my kin, hello
to the bad lot we are, to the women mean and plucked, and to the men
on the broken steps who beat down the roses with their hosings,
to the nights that rose black as an inked plate, into which an acid bit stars—
puckered, tight, hard, pale as a surgeon’s scars,
hello to all that vast, unconditional bad luck, to the sensible, the stuffy,
the ugly couture of the thrifty, to the limp of bad goods, of old
furniture, the repeated wince of the creaky rocker, and to the grandmothers
dying in its clutch, and hello to rage which like an axis can move the world.
