People At Night

A night that cuts between you and you and you and you and you and me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing through a crowd. We won't look for each other, either- wander off, each alone, not looking in the slow crowd. Among sideshows under movie signs, pictures made of a million lights, giants that move and again move again, above a cloud of thick smells, franks, roasted nutmeats- Or going up to some apartment, yours or yours, finding someone sitting in the dark: who is it really? So you switch the light on to see: you know the name but who is it ? But you won't see. The fluorescent light flickers sullenly, a pause. But you command. It grabs each face and holds it up by the hair for you, mask after mask. You and you and I repeat gestures that make do when speech has failed and talk and talk, laughing, saying 'I', and 'I', meaning 'Anybody'. No one.