Aubade

Which among us has never heard the music of traffic taking wing, shades and variations of a logarithmic chord, song of the city like a message from within?
Who could fail the summons of yon quite visible smokestacks aglint through gray inutterable vapors this peculiarly unparticular morn? Where is he who does not bear the scars of shingle nails upon a tattered thumb, the tar of Stinky Weinberg's stooped roof, laundromats raped and looted by streetlights, buses smoked to fitful ashes, night's metropolis melted down and recast? Song of the city like a terrible job, nail-gunning sheetrock in a West Loop heat wave, late shift with a push broom in a clockless terminal, hustling cocktails at zero hour when the sour beads of fear drop like pearl onions into every glass of beer and watered whiskey along the rail, sad drunks eating pickled eggs, loneliness worn like the robes ofa prize fighter, rags and bones, rags and what?