Wall Street

We walk further downtown, beyond the Village graffiti

that says AIDS IS THRUSH

AND IT'S CURABLE!  

Life is money and the buildings are bigger here.

It's Ash Wednesday,

this is a day to commemorate

some crisis:  all the last-born, maybe,

picked from among the perfect suits, the ones

wearing on their groomed brows a smudge

like a smear of sex. Look how ready they are,

it makes them hunger for six weeks without sin.

Being with my sacrilegious Manhattan friend,

it's time to look at a few spiky old churches,

because we don't visit here often.

Remarkable needlework: the white altarcloth, with

crossed pairs of three-tail scourges in red.

More smudges: gladly humble

to wear this dirt mark in public.

And Jesus, with his robes hanging off him,

stands at a bank of candles, warming his hands.