This is the cripples’ hour on Seventh Avenue 
when they emerge, the two o’clock night-walkers, 
the cane, the crutch, and the black suit. 

Oblique early mirages send the eyes: 
night dramatized in puddles, the animal glare 
that makes indignity, makes the brute. 

Not enough effort in the sky for morning. 
No color, pantomime of blackness, landscape 
where the third layer black is always phantom 

Here comes the fat man, the attractive dog-chested 
legless—and the wounded infirm king 
with nobody to use him as a saint. 

Now they parade in the dark, the cripples’ hour 
to the drugstore, the bar, the newspaper-stand, 
past kissing shadows on a window-shade to 

colors of alcohol, reflectors, light. 
Wishing for trial to prove their innocence 
with one straight simple look: 

the look to set this avenue in its colors— 
two o’clock on a black street instead of 
wounds, mysteries, fables, kings 
in a kingdom of cripples.