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.

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