在欢乐湾河畔的柳树间，一只猫鸟在歌唱，从不重复同样的乐句。1927年，在离路不远的松树下，警察局长和w夫人一起自杀了，他们坐在一辆敞篷跑车里。古老的未动摇的桩基和水下的未粉刷过的砖块形状像拼图一样散落在底部，那里是普莱斯酒店和剧院的着陆点。在这里，船吹响了两声，让看守人分流铁摆桥。他靠在齿轮上，就像一个住在棚屋里的船长，桥在呻吟，在中间的桥墩上转动，让他们通过。盛夏时节，两三节车厢可能在一旁等待着那架铁架，也许有个孩子会注意到船尾黑金配白底的名字:矶鹞、帕齐·安、请勿打扰、游手好闲者。如果一艘船在运威士忌，当它经过的时候，船桥就会哐当关上，然后又为海岸警卫队的快艇打开，速度慢得像日晷，而且总是卡在半路上。路基是完整的，但像一个开关一样打开，河水在桥墩之间流动。同样的乐句从不重复，猫鸟用借来的音乐填满了八月潮湿的夜晚，靠近入口，他把它们融合和改变。蜻蜓和白蛉，芦苇丛里的青蛙，松树间的敞篷车里一动不动的两具尸体，一丝丝的故事。 The tenor at Price's Hotel, In clown costume, unfurls the sorrow gathered In ruffles at his throat and cuffs, high quavers That hold like splashes of light on the dark water, The aria's closing phrases, changed and fading. And after a gap of quiet, cheers and applause Audible in the houses across the river, Some in the audience weeping as if they had melted Inside the music. Never the same. In Berlin The daughter of an English lord, in love With Adolf Hitler, whom she has met. She is taking Possession of the apartment of a couple, Elderly well-off Jews. They survive the war To settle here in the Bay, the old lady Teaches piano, but the whole world swivels And gapes at their feet as the girl and a high-up Nazi Examine the furniture, the glass, the pictures, The elegant story that was theirs and now Is part of hers. A few months later the English Enter the war and she shoots herself in a park, An addled, upper-class girl, her life that passes Into the lives of others or into a place. The taking of lives--the Chief and Mrs. W. Took theirs to stay together, as local ghosts. Last flurries of kisses, the revolver's barrel, Shivers of a story that a child might hear And half remember, voices in the rushes, A singing in the willows. From across the river, Faint quavers of music, the same phrase twice and again, Ranging and building. Over the high new bridge The flashing of traffic homeward from the racetrack, With one boat chugging under the arches, outward Unnoticed through Pleasure Bay to the open sea. Here's where the people stood to watch the theater Burn on the water. All that night the fireboats Kept playing their spouts of water into the blaze. In the morning, smoking pilasters and beams. Black smell of char for weeks, the ruin already Soaking back into the river. After you die You hover near the ceiling above your body And watch the mourners awhile. A few days more You float above the heads of the ones you knew And watch them through a twilight. As it grows darker You wander off and find your way to the river And wade across. On the other side, night air, Willows, the smell of the river, and a mass Of sleeping bodies all along the bank, A kind of singing from among the rushes Calling you further forward in the dark. You lie down and embrace one body, the limbs Heavy with sleep reach eagerly up around you And you make love until your soul brims up And burns free out of you and shifts and spills Down over into that other body, and you Forget the life you had and begin again On the same crossing--maybe as a child who passes Through the same place. But never the same way twice. Here in the daylight, the catbird in the willows, The new café, with a terrace and a landing, Frogs in the cattails where the swing-bridge was-- Here's where you might have slipped across the water When you were only a presence, at Pleasure Bay.