They came in waves; they riders swing before the ambulance
their swords and batons. Saturday night this poor woman
nose to the sidewalk—she was foaming—we didn't want
this, under the hovering lamps, and the noise was bothersome, all these
dark-eyed men from all over Europe arrived later after the sirens so
upset that we were closed, party dimmed. And the riders, the night,
so mean, they blamed us. We bought this building—a single crown—we
floored the garden—we painted over newspaper ink
the factory walls. These days the sidewalk sags, the old crown sinks,
We cannot hold them to their word, outside, the nightmen
in yellow vests, they come now and then to pick our rosemary
and take to a grand vault somewhere under
scaffolding. They light cigarettes and toss them
far; they curse their fortunes, to serve a god buried
in the blue swamp where these canals now collapse. We did not
learn the woman's name she told me
while lucid she would have loved to have me
as a daughter. Nobody knew her, what she had taken.
Little Trouble, sweet baby, from the sirens,
hiding under the bed in a suitcase, she hears what
humans cannot, through a cracked window, the ships
in the fingers of their bonny masts, bringing something old
putrid ships of fiery wood, something drying upon them
ships they are coming home.