How bad can it be
this wacky New York City
with the first twelve lines
of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
blinking down at me
from a poster on this bus
brought to us
courtesy of the MTA
and the Poetry Society of America
(of which, incredibly, I am a member!)
and, to its right, above the rear door,
another poster: Charles Reznikoff's little poem
about how 'the lights go out- '
in the subway
'but are on again in a moment,'
a poem I will be teaching to my students
in about a month's time.
And perched in the center back seat
(she got on at Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street)
the beautiful actress Beverly D'Angelo
whom I couldn't bring myself to ask
if shewas Beverly D'Angelo, except that I
recognized the perfection of her perfect little over-bite
chewing gum like mad over wild blue eyes agog,
as if she'd never sat on a bus before
or expected one of the passengers (I mean
me, of course) to leap from his seat
and cry 'Action!' at any moment,
with the cameras turning like the eyes in my head
that roll now and again to look at her
wearing white jacket and skirt
that don't quite match, silk turquoise blouse
that does match her enormous eyes
(she just got off at 57th and Eighth)
and I'm lucky enough to have been handed
this piece of paper twenty minutes ago
by one of those guys in the street I always
go out of my way to take a leaflet from,
an advertisement for 45th Street Photo,
on the back of which I've just written this poem