He seldom spoke, even when well, and when he did it was misterioso, brief,
a gnomic shorthand, often only a grunt,
but his musicians got it, Nellie, Boo-Boo, and Sphere III too.
Nowadays next to nothing comes out his mouth, nothing at all.
– What’s with his head, Woo?
(He insisted on calling all his doctors ‘Ping Pock Woo’, can’t say why)
– Dunno, says Woo.
A Steinway, marooned, in a corner of the living room.
Him mostly in the bedroom. Nica’s cats pad in and out,
licking themselves clean where they’ve collapsed in a puddle of sunshine.
Still, he carefully dresses every morning, spiffed up, suit and tie,
only to stay lying there in bed, glued to Bob Barker and The Price Is Right:
the dinette sets and double-door Amana refrigerators,
brought to you by 100% pure Dove Soap and Imperial Margarine.
Out the window of the old Von Sternberg house Nica’s brother bought,
three Bauhaus cubes midst the frame&brick extravaganzas on Kings Bluff,
tugs push garbage scows south to the harbor’s mouth and open sea.
He watches the river all the day long. That’s what he does:
what the wind and light make of the water, for seasons on end,
the shimmer off the river at 9 am, the wakes the ferries and cruise ships make –
headed where? Barbados? The Antilles? France? –
slowly passing across his field of vision like giant, ocean-going wedding cakes.
What is there left to say, anyhow? Or play? They either got it or not.
His world, or what of it that’s stayed with him, lies directly across the way:
the tenements of the old San Juan Hill neighborhood, Minton’s, 52nd Street –
none of it what it was, everything something else ....
He watches as the lights begin to switch on across the river come end of day,
the skyline and clouds above going electric with pinks and reds
as the sun goes down behind him over the Meadowlands in the west.
Sometimes at night, looking across, he feels a twinge, the throb and pull of it.
But it don’t pull all that hard, and it’s too damn much of a bother anyhow.

August Kleinzahler