The Feldsteins have a colic baby:
she cries all night, can’t eat, can’t sleep
except in snatches – (Mrs. Feldstein breast-
feeds and the wheat she boils for breakfast
sickens her infant. But this is not the point.)
Baby dropped to sleep just ten minutes ago.
Mrs. F, pale with her all-day/all-night
walks and the incessant machinery of rocking,
sprawls on her brown velvet La-Z Boy,
goes out like a light. Minutes later, you
lean on your horn below her window, just
as the signal goes greenóthe tired driver ahead
less alert than he used to be, back
when he didnít have to work a second job.