This is the cripple’s hour on Seventh Avenue <br />when they emerge, the two o’clock night-walkers, <br />the cane, the crutch, and the black suit. <br />Oblique early mirages send the eyes: <br />night dramatized in puddles, the animal glare <br />that makes indignity, makes the brute. <br />Not enough effort in the sky for morning. <br />No color, pantomime of blackness, landscape <br />where the third layer black is always phantom <br /> <br />Here comes the fat man, the attractive dog-chested <br /> legless—and the wounded infirm king <br />with nobody to use him as a saint. <br /> <br />Now they parade in the dark, the cripples’ hour <br />to the drugstore, the bar, the newspaper-stand, <br />past kissing shadows on a window-shade to <br />colors of alcohol, reflectors, light. <br />Wishing for trial to prove their innocence <br />with one straight simple look: <br /> <br />the look to set this avenue in its colors— <br />two o’clock on a black street instead of <br />wounds, mysteries, fables, kings <br />in a kingdom of cripples.<br /><br />Muriel Rukeyser<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/seventh-avenue-2/
