Suburban Surf
--Robert Lowell

You lie in my insomniac arms, as if you drank sleep like coffee. Then, like a bear tipping a hive for honey, you shake the pillow for French cigarettes. No conversation—then suddenly as always cars helter‐skelter for feed like cows— suburban surf come alive, diamond‐faceted like your eyes, glassy, staring lights lighting the way they cannot see friction, constriction etc. the racket killing gas like alcohol. Long, unequal whooshing waves break in volume, always very loud enough to hear—méchants, mechanical—soothe, delay, divert the crescendo always surprisingly attained in a panic of breathlessness—too much assertion and skipping of the heart to greet the day ... the truce with uncertain heaven. A false calm is the best calm. In noonday light, the cars are tin, stereotype and bright, a farce of their former selves at night—invisible as exhaust, personal as animals. Gone the sweet agitation of the breath of Pan.