The Birthday Dream

At the worst place in the hills above the cityLate at night I was driving cutting throughThe overbalancing slums. There was no soul or bodyIn the streets. I turned right then left somewhereNear the top, dead-ending into a wall. A carPulled out and blocked me. Four men detached from it.I got out too. It was Saturday night the thrillOf trouble shimmered on the concrete. One shadowHad a bottle of wine. I stood and said, say, Buddy,Give me a drink of that wine not at all fearingShaking as on anything but dream bones dreamFeet I would have. He said, We’re looking for somebodyTo beat up. It won’t be me, I said and took himBy the arm with one hand and tossed him into the air.Snow fell from the clearness in time for thereTo be a snowbank for him to fall into elbow-first.He got up, holding the wine. This guy is too big,He said, he is too big for us; get the Professor.Four of us stood together as the wind blew and the snowDisappeared and watched the lights of the cityShine some others appearing among them someGoing out and watched the lava-flow of headlights offIn the valley. Like a gunshot in the building next to usA light went out and down came a middle-aged manWith a hairy chest; his gold-trimmed trach shorts hadYMCA Instructor on them and I knew it was timeFor the arm game. We stretched out on our stomachsOn top of the dead-end wall. On one side was the dropWe had all been looking into and the other side sankAway with my car with the men: two; Slow darks liftedUs toward the moon. We put our elbows on the wallAnd clasped palms. Something had placed gold-trimmedGlasses of wine beside us apartment lights hung in themLoosely and we lay nose to nose at the beginningOf that ceremony; I saw the distant traffic cross himFrom eye to eye. Slowly I started to push and heTo push. My body grew as it lay forced against hisBut nothing moved. I could feel the blood vesselsIn my brow distend extend grow over the walls like vinesAnd in my neck swell like a trumpet player’s: I grittedInto his impassive face where the far lights moved this isWhat I want this is what I came for. The city pulsedAnd trembled in my arm shook with my effort for milesIn every direction and from far below in the darkI heard the voices of men raised up in a cry of wildEncouragement of terror joy as I strained to pushHis locked hand down. I could not move him did not wantTo move him would not yield. The world strove with my bodyTo overcome the highways shuddered writhed came apartAt the centerline far below us a silent train went byA warning light and slowly from the embodying air was loadedWith thousands of ghostly new cars in tiered racksThe light like pale wine in their tinted windshields.The culture swarmed around me like my blood transfiguredBy force. I put my head down and pushed with all my lifeAnd writing sprang under my forehead onto the concrete:A tire iron a scrap of metal from a stolen car sayingYou are here and I wokeEntangled with my wife, who labored  pled screamedTo bring me forth. The room was full of mildness. I was forty.

from Falling (1967)