A Very Young Man, A Very Fair Woman

At the same moment
the night cries of the man and the street cries
of something that may be a man,
so the man in his drawers or half out of them
leans out the fire escape to see
whether there is something out in the darkness
as terrified as he is, and there is,
                   a woman,
she has been leapt on by a cat,
and he in his dreams has been leapt on by a cat,
and this is what cats are,
                                  everywhere. In the morning
the man has ideas about women that are deadly
inaccurate—
for the man who has nicked himself in his sleep
with a fingernail
has an imprecise sense of all things. And the cat,
who’s been nicked by the point
                   of a lady’s umbrella,
has an idea about rain that is more weathercock
than a windfall. And the wind continues its exit
between them all, between the man and the cat
and the woman
                   and their dreams.