Milk bottles packed round with snow.
The light an arctic blue,
as though acute despair and sudden emptiness
were wedded in the placid eyes of Mary-of-the-hill.
Gangsters claimed scorpion virtues
but were kind to children, selecting the dirtiest
to defledge and swear to blindness.
Spittle soothed the calloused hold,
to bully into shelter with a mentoring growl,
phlegm of contrition torn from memory’s context.
Down the frozen street I saw Eddie Constantine
smoking solo, Delon studying a subway map,
a cortege announcing itself like a drum.
Departing trains left behind a blast
of silence, into which the mourners fell,
headlong and unthinking, lemmings in topcoats.