(Roxbury Crossing, Boston, 1978) 5. The world as it is, the world as I imagined it -- what do you dream, what do you imagine -- the world transformed, the world as it is, where I turn a corner one hot summer morning into a little avenue -- the shapes of houses, the shapes of thoughts, melting together a little in the humid air -- what do you imagine, what do you wish for, what do you dream -- if not a home just a place I might afford to live -- the world I dreamed up, the world in front of my face -- the world transformed, the world as it is -- a line separating the two like woman and man, white and black, grownup and child, straight and not -- the city is split, the world, split, our imaginations, split -- what do you imagine, what do you wish for, what do you expect -- working for next to nothing, not expecting much, expecting love in a theoretical time to come, childlessly caring for children all day and organizing a union, knocking on doors with the union paper like a missionary with the truth -- there's the world as we want it, and there's the world we've got -- timid survivor out to change the world and everything changes but the world doesn't change very much -- horny, starving, now and then a man in my bed who leaves in the morning, what do you expect, wanting to love, not expecting much -- what do you imagine when you are working, what do you want -- just to change our childhood, just to dismantle the world and start over with the way the spirit and the mind are fed -- the real world, the world we never had -- and one summer morning I turn up a little avenue -- woman leaning on her window sill to check the day's sky says you're a nice boy, I can tell -- loud little TV blaring the telenovela out the corner store, black and white kids hollering over stickball, actually playing on the same block, guy on a stoop offering me speed under his breath -- the world as it is, melting alongside a somewhat faster world in his mind -- an island in the city, a little shabby, a little avenue set apart, a little beautiful, a little unsafe at night, a little place for rent, two rooms, plank floors, brick walls, ascetic, charming, cheap, a little bathtub facing a couple of little bullet holes out on the fire escape -- the world as I imagined it, the world as it is -- the neighbors are painters and dancers, Little Sisters of the Poor, houseful of gay boys in a punk band, a mom who puts on plays with the kids out in the street, a mom from Puerto Rico running for Congress -- what do you wish for, what do you imagine, what do you want -- just to remake the world, starting with our street -- and I see a shy boy peeking from behind an upstairs curtain, the veil of separation between worlds -- I know you, child -- what do you imagine, what do you dream -- I know the world is split, the city is split, our imaginations are split -- tell me a story, tell me the way we close our eyes one morning and reopen them at the center of the world, the world transformed, the world as it is, the way a person comes to know another, the way a person changes to someone new, the way a story springs out of the heart all at once in many languages, fashioning a heaven of words among us in the air -- what do you dream, what do you imagine -- just to make the world as real as it is, and ourselves as real in it as we are.