Sidney, when we sat together on the blue planked benches
Of City Hall Park, you talked for three hours about the march
Of the new while the pigeons danced around us.
It was finally all you took from Marx:
That the dance of History through darkness
Is a miracle like the feathery tail of a comet.
Every time I went through that core of the city
You were holding court in the guano.
I liked your office and the view of Trinity
And City Hall as you chatted among the tumbleweed newspapers.
Your large protruding eyes took in the fetid air
Of Manhattan icily; your white hair fell in braids
Like a turn of the century Red from the bowels of life.
You were never one for statues
Or anything that didn’t change. The joint is very empty
Without you, Sidney. You left your writing, not guano.
You flew through the dirt; you were one of the pigeons.
