The Street
by Franz Wright

On it lives one bird

who commences singing, for some reason best known to
itself, at precisely 4 a.m.

Each day I listen for it in the night.

I too have a song to say alone

but can't begin. On it, surrounded by blocks of
black warehouses,

is located this room. I say this room, but no one
knows

how many rooms I have. So many rooms how shall I
light

so many . . . Also yours, though you are never
there.

It's true I've been gone a long time.

But I have come back. I have.

Where are you?

I can change.

***

I really like that poem up until the last two lines, and then it loses me. Or I should say, it leaves me feeling uncomfortable. But then I realize, that was a very raw and real thing for him to write. Maybe that's why it makes me uncomfortable. But regardless, it took all my willpower to not edit out those last two lines.