Pigeons furl the silk of their oilslick     wings and doze on the limed shoulders         of forgotten generals, while the last commuters descend to the subways,     where they'll sway above their papers,         reflections streaming through the rapid dark. Christened bleue by the French,     this is the hour when evening raises         its azure wand and the light smoulders, cool center of a candle flame,     the five ring on an archer's target,         a few stars the silvery nibs of arrows just breaking through. Slender boys     in waiters' tuxes snap starched linens         over tables for two, as cabbies scour backseats clean of the day's real     detritus, and one by one, all over         the city, vapor lamps spread their sodium veils like some fast-travelling rumor,     gild the drowsing streets, graffitied         buildings, until even the harbor, the river freighted with sludge, even the smoke-     stacks percolating a foul snow of ash         and grit over the Jersey Palisades, have gone soft-focus, the whole town     a Chamber of Commerce photo, or moony         perfume ad. Prelude to the strict black of night, this is the moment we may     imagine the hiss of nylon, the garter         a woman slides, high on her leg, for a man dressing, even now, in his best     suit, when we find ourselves humming         Gershwin tunes, thinking romance, possibility — of glamour we know better     than by day. Which is why the woman     lingers, her heart beating like a bird's does, too quickly, why the man hesitates     beneath her window, his face chiaroscuro         in blue shadow, a square of light. Reprinted with permission from Peru in Take Three: 2 Copyright © 1997 by Susan Aizenberg Graywolf Press

WHAT IT IS by SUSAN AIZENBERG

Absent — that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there. Wharton, Age Of Innocence All morning the wind suggests departure, troubling the glass, ferrying the dead leaves, lavish in their travelling colors, from branch to gutter as it makes for distant latitudes. And it's erotic, isn't it — the way it shifts, fickle, hushed as an insinuating gesture, among the lightening trees? Maybe it's this novel I've been reading, Wharton's Archer so absent he's like a newborn, astonished by anything — light sparking off cut crystal, the cool timbre of a woman's low voice. And I must admit it scares me to know so well those shadow rooms he's cluttered with imaginary furniture, what it is to bring to them his cherished books and company, to wait with him, beneath a Paris sky the bluest glacier could get lost in, losing my place to this insistent wind, until dusk, evening's resplendent pardon. Reprinted with permission from Peru in Take Three: 2 Copyright © 1997 by Susan Aizenberg Graywolf Press