The Collected Poems of James Laughlin

You know our office on the 18th floor of the Salmon Tower looks right out on the Empire State and it just happened we were there finishing up some late invoices on a new book that Saturday morning when a bomber roared through the mist and crashed flames poured from the windows into the drifting clouds and sirens screamed down in the streets below it was unearthly but you know the strangest thing we realized that none of us were much surprised be- cause we'd always known that those two paragons of progress sooner or later would per- form before our eyes this demon- stration of their true relationship.