walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache

            selfconscious looking at the full moon.

            In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit

supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

            What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night!

            Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!

            and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

            I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among

the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

            I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What

            price bananas? Are you my Angel?

            I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and

            followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting

            artichokes possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

            Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which

            way does your beard point tonight?

            (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd).

Will we walk solitary streets? The trees add shade to

            shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

            We will stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles

            in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did

you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking

bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of  Lethe.