*RE: please ignore*

Lisbon a girl not ten chased me off her street
with a neon pink plastic whistle and furled brow
fado on the radio and the emaciated go to that bar
for soup and to drink and for song
and he sings to the whitewashed wall:
	Everything in Portugal is beautiful
	Everything here in Portugal
	Everything is beautiful
I slept altogether four hours in Lisbon
and spent as many watching the rain 

Said goodbye to the Rhine
watching lights of crafts pass even
past a bend beyond a bridge
and the steady break at my feet
of their reflection come near
I got to know all the regulars at the bar
save the hooker with the laugh
everyone came to hear
The drunk asked me for a drink
and wept when I let down my hair
and spoke of my father's passing
Weinen Sie nicht, I plead,
weil vergeblich sind unsere Tränen.

Aachen day trip worth it for the passage to the throne:
but for incandescent fixtures
would have felt yourself in a Dreyer
or, if you prefer, a prayer

Bowed to the Rhine
doffed my hat
and laughed 
walked up a few stone steps
turned again to the Rhine
and to all it meant to me
I bowed again
and to all it meant to me I laughed

Days behind shuttered windows
feeling too late for myself.
Only strangers to talk to me
ask for cigarettes.
Paris is a splendid drag.
Did I tell you?
They changed the name of the Woodside bar 
Used to be called Ovidio's.
Got rid of the jukebox too,
with the duets for two voices and guitars.
I came home tonight because I'm too old
to drink for drink's sake
in a city I'll never know
or lose myself in
a halfhearted heartache
smiled at a girl today who
smiled at me last night
and didn't smile back.

I left my manuscript paper back home
as well as my sketchbooks
In Cologne I asked my host to leave his door open
that we might better hear the neighbor downstairs
playing through Chopin's Préludes
I wanted to write them a letter
but Germany's not a place you do that sort of thing,
his wife said, and laughed,
but if you want to write a letter
—Sehr geehrte Klavierspieler—
we'll drop it off the day we leave.

Here instead in the alley
when I took out the trash
a scratched record
recites a charmless bar of
an étude
out a window 

Your parentheses I know are not license for these divagations.
Today's my last day alone here,
not yet dark and still drinking.
I'll step out for an overdue smoke.
Please ignore.