O, Brown-Eyed Belle of Saint Mark

O, Brown-Eyed Belle, I think of you oftener now.  Resting on the antique wooden chairs yesterday, I realized that I never said “I love you” to you. Not even once. Remember the six-floor walk up on St. Mark’s Place not far from W.H. Auden’s? The tears of seven saints’ sorrow? The commotion on First Avenue below? Remember your sacred doubt? Riding around Staten Island on a bus as a kid, wondering what the Big City would be like? I remember your cobalt blue robe, your raven black hair and black Irish eyes; your wit, the old movie house, your snow-white hands, your honeysuckle and ginger perfume, your perfect face, your smile like the Left Bank. These fragments are all I have left of you . . . You once said, “I think you like the idea of me more than me,” but that wasn’t so. The whole of you was just too smart, too elegant, too refined, too lovely for me to try and contain and so these fragments are all I have now, they are the you I still cherish and have always loved.