Entering Time in a House
Photographed by Walker Evans

There is still something
Of November
1935 in Bethlehem--

The way the houses crowd
Shoulder to shoulder
In various degrees of gray,
And steel burns like hatred
Of living in shifts.

The faces on 4th Street
Are fill with gestures
From old snapshots.

They inhabit doorways
Like drawers, decades
Of light in their eyes,
Their heads in their hands,

The light tired as clapboard.

So that standing here
In the dog-eared window
I too enter a frame Evans saw
Over forty years ago,

Feel the shadow of his shutter
Pass across my face.

Down below the streets unwind
Like faded rolls of film.

Up the hill the cross
That caught his eye
Is still standing,
Encrusted with roses
Of miraculous stone,

Perennial bloom of the dead.

17 poems, 32 pages
ISBN: 0-935306-35-8
$6.95
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