Poetry/ Vincent Katz

Give hugs says the sugar packet
That comes with the cafe com leite

A lady speaks into her phone
An older couple sits at a table with a younger woman

People are in booths and at tables
It’s cooler but not as cold as expected 

It’s a good temperature for a run in the park
And a walk across the avenue to see what that building is

It looks like a Roman church
But is probably a medical faculty

Afternoon finally striking sides after cold
mountains gentle murmur encircling
crazy shafts of man, made into this valley

Dark comes down, slowly envelops
lights arrive as harbingers

Getting warm, night now the lights
are on in large and small projections
lots of trees down there as well

Morning opens the window, sun
though mist distant rooftop of church
or institute with tower, jagged angles

Terracotta tile quadrangular roofs
modern squat blocks particular style
rooftop urban gardens birds frequent

people in apartments doing things
the lit-up squares of the university

Softness in the sky, all the energy
settled down in wide spaces around
the tennis courts, flat lands agreed

A gentle curve in the mountains 
holding city buildings in its arms
is also the curve of life, gently

extending, seeming not to end
So many structures standing out
in the late light hazy as millions
in the distance stand under 

mountain’s reach and flag blows
nearer only badge of color in
a whitened array alleviated
temporarily by trees and night





VINCENT KATZ (vincentkatz.net) is a poet, translator, musician and critic. He is the author of the poetry collections Daffodil, Broadway for Paul, Southness, and Swimming Home, and he has published collaborative poems with Anne Waldman and Andrei Codrescu. He is the author of The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius, translations of the Roman love poet, and has translated the poems of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod. He has read his poems in various bookstores, cafes and bars around the country and abroad and is currently making music with his band, The Japes. He lives in New York City.