Late Summer Lament
First I pass the man having a morning smoke,
his cart filled with ripe melons.
Then a woman with her pyramids
of summer peaches.
They are the sweetest this time of year.
Then a basket of figs
I’m guessing from Wulumuqi
the color of fresh bruises,
the color of summer wounds
I hope will heal with time.
The cicadas are singing themselves to death,
because that’s what they do
at this time of year.
And if just one of them was caged
to your ear you’d go deaf,
you’d think you are losing your mind.
I could think of nothing else:
twenty million baby rattles going insane,
twenty million cries for love
heard above rivers of bad traffic,
above the never-ending destruction
when I spot a bucket of coal
in the morning sun
and how its blackness glitters.
