Dylan's Last Day
Created | Updated Mar 17, 2005
New York withers in mean Fall.
Bitter slant of grave-grey rain,
Brown brick and startle of chrome.
Vertiginous city, the fire-escape its dripping canopy,
Coddling and grinding its children.
This enigma : vibrant and stripped-of-soul.
The Chelsea Hotel, resigned to November, nineteen-fifty-three.
Rumpled room, spirit-stinking,
Your airless sepulchre, choked with nameless poisons.
This bier ash-strewn already.
Meanwhile you reel along Third Avenue,
Squinting at daylight squeezed between steepling walls.
Behind you a lonely mortuary, purged by nameless nobodies.
There comes no scent of honest freshness,
No hint of motherly scouring, brow-beaded on pink knees.
Your ordure merely swilled away by different foulness,
In moon-bound cycle of pestilence and sterility.
