TO A COCKROACH

My cockroach,

my companion.

There is no easy way.

I’ve seen you drowned

in refrigerated butter.

In New York, one April,

touching a kitchen switch,

I flicked ordinary night

into delirium.

All

your old varieties

dizzying the wall

above the pitch and spill

of mouldering dishes.

Hysteria of survival

riding the light.

It comes on us suddenly.

Too quick to be cold.

I loved a girl once

who slammed you dead by half

dozens, night after night,

in a St. Louis railroad

flat. Her big box

of Ohio Blue Tips making

the cheap table silver

jump and ring. Jesus,

she was beautiful!

But you’re the perfect

survivor. Twenty-five

million years of humility.

Let’s hear it,

tiny jewels of typhoid,

for quickness, aliases:

Shiner. Steam Fly.

Peri-

planeta americana.

La cucaracha, la cucaracha,

ya no puede caminar…

Drunker than artillery.

That girl I loved

I married. And this morning,

the wind lazy in the window

sheers, sheets rich

with the colors of privilege,

coupled jet fighters

from a nearby air base

sucking everything up,

every word up

into God’s roaring void,

I’m giddy.

Cockroach,

companion,

yours is the life that lasts,

the durable low babble.

Your eyes, quick and dark.

Mine, slow and blue.