monday poem #208: Jon Loomis, "Watching Wings of Desire with a Bad Cold"

[heresluck]

I liked this book less than I wanted to, on the whole, but I did like it - especially this poem, which also made me want to watch Wings of Desire again. Heh.
Watching Wings of Desire with a Bad Cold

We're riding the bus, we're eating a lunch
of eels and black bread. The angels walk

nearby. Tall and grave in grey overcoats,
they hear our thoughts: a neighbor's same

scratched record all day, all night-I want,
I want. Berlin is not Berlin. It's darker

than before the war, colder, low clouds
always ripe with ash. Each street butts

against a blank wall, tall as a scaffold-
time's little door flaps open, and down we go.

We're all ghosts, more grudge than memory,
thin complaints crowding a blue-tiled café

(stink of onions, stink of eels and black bread).
It's a long movie. Everybody wears a hat.

We ask the same questions over and over-
how to live? what's next?-until we're tired

of wondering, tired of ourselves. Sad in a way,
and cruel-our lives, the angels' reassuring touch.

- Jon Loomis
from Vanitas Motel


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