Jane and Ngozi by Copley Square

 

Jane and Ngozi by Copley Square

All of winter stands still for this.
We are walking by the brood
of an alley, its crushed boxes and piss
and cans filmed with rotting food.

You hold my hands, beautiful women
from a warm country, as you laugh, formally.
Your hair, latticed by a regimen
of ropes and pleats, keeps nothing warm

but raps against the down-gorged nylon
of your collars. The sun, distanced and thin,
collects on your boots, your mittens, and still
you are cold. Then veldt of grass, the lions
of Kenya, occlude the brittle wind
of Boston; your hands in mine unchilled.