The sensation created by the human voice

      Surrounds the bare lightbulb and makes

      It a radio bringing down the cultivated

      Air of this room and the slum section

      Of the city the soul seeks its order

      Amid the disorder of tenement streets

      So strange that in these poor neighborhoods

      So many women named Mimi are singing to him

      The voice in the hand of our imprecision

      New York language which forms its cold

      Beauty around a steel heart like flowers

      Crystals. Is it in spite of the Earth’s

      Heart uh some miracle speaks to the people

      Wrapped in the sounds of their hesitation

      These are the children of immigrant legends

      The art students sit drinking 98¢ chianti

      The words? Even a child’s grammar cd explain it

      To him, although most children wouldn’t believe

      And seek other justifications in the time literature

      Their parents “make believe” and the art students

      Who gather at their soda shoppes

      And discuss in front the radio

      Sonatas they are now so fond of

      They play one dull station all

      The time it is playing the same pretty

      Sonata about a beautiful young girl

      Living in sin with a mad violinist

      Somewhere in the awful slums of NYC

      And of all the people she thought

      She would not mind being in love

      Only one was not there, who she loved

      Thinking won’t it be charming when

      We decide to draw the purple covers

      All the art students were thinking

      “She framed me” and they all desire

      One who goes up the stairs and stops

      By the window in the light of another

      Sonata the deep background the backyard

      Presents, people sit on their stoops

      Drinking from beercans and pleading

      “Cut it out” to the voice that insists

      On the news

      Across from this island of stone

      Smoke rising up in the still air

      The voice which will recline on the flat air

      The heavy barges on the river headed

      For Belgium taking the concentration

      Of the lazy youngsters sprawled

      Derelicts of the sunlight on the

      Grassy hillsides. On the graying divan

      Lessons in English grammar are inter-

      With the languor of a deliberate kind

      Of romance with its blue 35mm pictures

      Ringing down the curtain on the sonata:

      The words? There are no words

      Still the singing is heard

      Why are we so foolishly engaged our environs

      Why are we allowing crime to insist

      On describing our form everything even

      Our gray gloves become suspect, even!

      Said the students illustrating their English

      THE CLAUSE

      Let its dreams carry like echoes

      Across the distances another song

      To seize her in her lovely trance

      Another night in New York City it’s snowing

      And still they insist on studying yoga

      Oh wretched one, why have you driven my time

      Away into this forest of stone the wind

      Laughs at Oh wretched one you have made

      Me the fool of the unfaithful seasons and

      This discipline you reveal in my dis- sd the students.

      Where in this street an art student

      Is seen with his clumsy portfolio

      Lights a du Maurier and meets his

      Girl