Nice Weather by Frederick Seidel Read Free Book Online

demonstrators outside her shop.
    The tornado funnels into focus from a censored blur.
    The military clears a path for her.
    Democracy is in the vicinity
    Of Nefertiti.
    We’ll meet in Tahrir Square.
    Every angel has gathered there,
    Including my own angel, wings of Isis flapping.
    Bandages are unwrapping
    The royal mummy, who’s been napping, but opens her charms.
    My Egypt angel wraps me in her arms.

TRACK BIKE
    The bicycle messenger who nearly knocked you over
    Was me trying to.
    That was me circling Columbus Circle
    On a track bike, the kind with one gear and no brakes.
    Look out! No brakes with a message!
    I flashed around the velodrome
    Of my life, clinging to your steeply banked curves,
    And discovered the New World.
    It’s as if your body were itself a person
    And the person wasn’t you.
    It’s as if I were a flesh-eating flower,
    Whereas actually I’m originally from St. Louis.
    The performing self opens the stage door.
    I start my act.
    I feel like running for office.
    I feel like riding a fixed-wheel track bike for the simplicity.
    You’ll play the viola
    And I’ll play myself.
    Komm, süsser Tod
    Comes out of my mouth
    Like a tail coming out of a dog.
    Take my hand and we’ll wag down Fifth Avenue.
    We’ll walk into the first church we see,
    Which is to say the Apple Store.
    I’m walking west on Central Park South
    With my iPhone out.
    I am calling you, oo oo oo, oo oo oo,
    With a love that’s true, oo oo oo, oo oo oo.
    We take the Time Warner Building
    Escalators up the four floors to the top.
    Something about how incredible it all is
    Tells me to stand back from the edge of the vertiginous view.
    I get dizzy imagining I’m on the balcony
    That runs around the torch of the Statue of Liberty
    Looking down on Columbus Circle.
    The handlebars are in my hands.
    I ride without brakes around and around.
    I walk around the torch blazing.
    I see you thirty blocks uptown
    In my bed, light pouring in.
    And we have tickets for the Bach at Lincoln Center.
    And let’s check out
    The Upper West Side Apple Store next door.
    It’s one more crystal-clear Apple cathedral
    For Saint Steve Jobs, who discovered America,
    Where the deer and the antelope play
    With the herds of touch screens on display,
    Not far from Columbus Circle and pancreatic cancer.

Also by Frederick Seidel
    POEMS 1959–2009
    EVENING MAN
    OOGA-BOOGA
    THE COSMOS TRILOGY
    BARBADOS
    AREA CODE 212
    LIFE ON EARTH
    THE COSMOS POEMS
    GOING FAST
    MY TOKYO
    THESE DAYS
    POEMS , 1959–1979
    SUNRISE
    FINAL SOLUTIONS

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
    18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
    Copyright © 2012 by Frederick Seidel
    All rights reserved
    First edition, 2012
    eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
    www.fsgbooks.com
    eISBN 9781466879775
    First eBook edition: August 2014