By Matt Mosman
Here in August The air just sort of lies on you Like steaming barber's towels And you're sweating bullets From the minute you step outside To mingle your sweat With the hot stink of Vienna hot dogs And Polish sausage and exhaust fumes And to mix your wordless noise With the snap of heeled shoes on pavement And the rumble and honk of diesel-engine taxicabs With spitting, swearing drivers Who ferry masses a person at a time With their bags packed up like their lives To and from the heart which is An airport twice the size of your hometown Where you have a value in yourself. But here you're a grain. The only true baptism requires immersion, To be in it and it in you. Not Byzantium, then, But here-- Matt Mosman