edward hirsch
special orders
Give me back my father walking the halls
of Wertheimer Box and Paper Company
with sawdust clinging to his shoes.
​
Give me back his tape measure and his keys,
his drafting pencil and his order forms;
give me his daydreams on lined paper.
​
I don't understand this uncontainable grief.
Whatever you had that never fit,
whatever else you needed, believe me,
​
my father, who wanted your business,
would squat down at your side
and sketch you a container for it.
last saturday
Then the doorbell rang suddenly,
like an alarm, on Saturday morning.
"Who's there?" I called out.
"The new exterminator."
​
I was infested, it's true,
but I never expected him to come
so early, without warning.
I never expected him to be so young.
to d.b.
I miss your apartment on West Eleventh Street
where I slept off the front hall in a bedroom
that would have been a closet in another city.
​
The plants breathed easily in their heavy pots,
but the radiators knocked all night, like ghosts
trying to reach us from the other side.
​
The traffic on Sixth Avenue was a slow buzz.
Someone rattled a dog chain in the moonlight
that bathed the schoolyard across the street.
​
Light seeped in through the barred windows.
I could hear Faith rustling around downstairs,
getting ready for work, unwilling to die.
​
If there is a West Village in the other world,
we will someday meet there. I'll reach over
and hug you, which will make you uneasy.
​
Let's go for a bottle of wine at the tavern
near the branch library and then stroll over
to Citarella for prosciutto and melon.
​
You can buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner
and explain the architecture to me. Maybe
I can stay at your place until I get settled.