The Indian Girl

You're waiting you’ve always been
Waiting it's nothing
New you've waited whenever
You wanted anything
And you were waiting when the kettle
Sang to the canary and the
Indian girl let you make love to
Her secretly before she died
In a car accident you were waiting
For your wife to become sweet
You were waiting for your body to
Become thin and muscular, and
The girl from India, in
Her apartment on Mackay Street
She said, Leonard
You’ve been waiting for me all afternoon
Especially when we were all listening
To the canary in your wife's kitchen
That's when
It really got to you, the three of
Us standing in front of the cage
The kettle whistling and our
Great expectations for the
Canary, the song that was going to lift the
Three of us out of the afternoon
Out of the winter that's
When the waiting was too much for you
That's when i understood how deeply and
Impersonally you desired me
And that's when I decided to
Invite you into my
Arms supposing she said this
To herself and then
I drove her home and she invited me up
To her apartment and she did not resist
My profound impersonal affection for
Her dark unknown person
And she saw how general, how neutral
How relentlessly impersonal was
This man's aching for her and she took me to
The green Salvation Army couch
Among the student furniture, she
Took me because she was going to die in two
Weeks in a car accident
On the Laurentian highway, she
Took me in one of her last embraces
Because she
Saw how simple I would be to comfort
And I was so grateful to be
Numbered among her last generous
Activities on this earth and I
Went back to my
Wife, my young wife, the one who would
Never thaw, who would bear me children
Who would hate me for one
Good reason or another
All the days of her life
Who would know a couple of my
Friends a little too well we
Stood, the three of us, listening
To the duet of the canary and the kettle, the
Steam clouding the windows of
Our kitchen on Esplanade
And the Montreal winter shutting everything
Down but the heart of hope mara was her name
And she came to visit us, as we
Made visit's in those days
Driving through the snow to meet someone new