Faust

        If only the phantom would stop reappearing!
	Business, if you wanted to know, was punk at the opera.
	The heroine no longer appeared in Faust.
	The crowds strolled sadly away.  The phantom
	Watched them from the roof, not guessing the hungers
	That must be stirred before disappointment can begin.
	 
        One day as morning was about to begin
	A man in brown with a white shirt reappearing
	At the bottom of his yellow vest, was talking hungers
	With the silver-haired director of the opera.
	On the green-carpeted floor no phantom
	Appeared, except yellow squares of sunlight, like those in Faust.
	 
        That night as the musicians for Faust
	Were about to go on strike, lest darkness begin
	In the corridors, and through them the phantom
	Glide unobstructed, the vision reappearing
	Of blond Marguerite practicing a new opera
	At her window awoke terrible new hungers
	 
        In the already starving tenor.  But hungers
	Are just another topic, like the new Faust
	Drifting through the tunnels of the opera
	(In search of lost old age?  For they begin
	To notice a twinkle in his eye.  It is cold daylight reappearing
	At the window behind him, itself a phantom
	 
        Window, painted by the phantom
	Scene painters, sick of not getting paid, of hungers
	For a scene below of tiny, reappearing
	Dancers, with a sandbag falling like a note in Faust
	Through purple air.  And the spectators begin
	To understand the bleeding tenor star of the opera.)
	 
        That night the opera
	Was crowded to the rafters.  The phantom
	Took twenty-nine curtain calls.  “Begin!
	Begin!”  In the wings the tenor hungers
	For the heroine’s convulsive kiss, and Faust
	Moves forward, no longer young, reappearing
	 
        And reappearing for the last time.  The opera
	Faust would no longer need its phantom.
	On the bare, sunlit stage the hungers could begin.