Philadelphia is so peaceful in the early morning hours
Her bareness so touching, her pulse asphyxiated,
It would not be hard to fathom all of her peoples
Vanished like cremated bodies into the cold

Walking in this quiet, admiring roses bloomed in November
(though their skins are wilted and crinkled and crying)
It is difficult not to miss Philadelphia as if I have already died,
My life here laying behind like the long daylight

But I am a man who lives so much in passing
Whose loves exist as but fragmentary sentences
Or the imagined grazes of stubble to chin,
The way chapped lips taste after a bottle of wine

When I am gone, what happens to these memories,
Or to the crushed pieces of golden leaves
That collect like dust between the ageless cobblestones?