Starlings, Broad Street, Trenton, 2003
Paul Muldoon

Indiscernible, for the most part, the welts and weals
on their two-a-penny skins,
weals got by tinkering with tin
foil from condoms or chewing gum, welts as slow to heal

as spot-welds on steel
in a chop-shop where, by dint of the din,
their calls will be no clearer than their colors till they spin
(or are spun) around to reveal

this other sphere in which their hubbub’s the hubbub
of all-night revelers at reveille,
girls with shoes in hand, boys giving their all

to the sidewalk outside a club,
their gloom a gloom so distinctly shot through with glee
they might be dancing still under a disco-ball.