To D.B. by Edward Hirsch

 TO D.B

by Edward Hirsch

I miss your apartment on West Eleventh Street

where I slept off the front hall in a bedroom

that would have been a closet in another city.

The plants breathed easily in their heavy pots,

but the radiators knocked all night, like ghosts

trying to reach us from the other side.

The traffic on Sixth Avenue was a slow buzz.

Someone rattled a dog chain in the moonlight

that bathed the schoolyard across the street.

Light seeped in through the barred windows.

I could hear Faith rustling around downstairs,

getting ready for work, unwilling to die.

If there is a West Village in the other world,

we will someday meet there.  I’ll reach over

and hug you, which will make you uneasy.

Let’s go for a bottle of wine at the tavern

near the branch library and then stroll over

to Citarella for prosciutto and melon.

You can buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner

and explain the architecture to me.  Maybe

I can stay at your place until I get settled.