Season of Death
Edwin Rolfe
- This is the sixth winter:
- this is the season of death
- when lungs contract and the breath of homeless men
- freezes on restaurant window panes---men seeking
- the sight of rare food
- before the head is lowered into the upturned collar
- and the shoulders haunched and the shuffling feet
- move away slowly, slowly disappear
- into a darkened street.
- This is the season when rents go up:
- men die, and their dying is casual.
- I walk along a street, returning
- at midnight from my unit. Meet a man
- leaning against an illumined wall
- and ask him for a light.
- His open eyes
- stay fixed on mine. And cold rain falling
- trickles down his nose, his chin.
- "Buddy," I begin...and look more closely--
- and flee in horror from the corpse's grin.
- The eyes pursue you even in sleep and
- when you awake they stare at your from the ceiling;
- you see the dead face peering from your shoes;
- the eggs at Thompson's are the dead man's eyes.
- Work dims them for eight hours, but then--
- the machines silent--they appear again.
- Along the docks, in the terminals, in the subway, on the street,
- in restaurants--the eyes
- are focused from the river
- among the floating garbage
- that other men fish for,
- their hands around poles
- almost in prayer--
- wanting to live,
- wanting to live! who also soon
- will stand propped by death against a stone-cold wall.
1935