In London, 1973, Watching Ultimo Tango A Parigi Poem by Edward Mayes

In London, 1973, watching Ultimo Tango a Parigi
From the theater's balcony, might I not have

Seen you through smoke broken by
The light from the projector, or among those others
Who walked out into humidity after Paul, 48, is shot
And Jeanne, 19, holds the gun she fired, and

Yet I drop from another day, the air dieselized
And silted with Thames water and the near-knowledge
That edges are best kept edgy, the edge of the street
Where I fall into traffic, the remembered black

And white buzzing in living rooms of Edge
Of Night, or the way the blinded Earl of Gloucester
Jumps off the edge of the cliff and dies on
The way down, crumpled into nothingness,

And Marlon Brando also years after weighing in
At twice what I weigh, weighted down, thirty
Years earlier crumpling on the Parisian balcony, his
Last act sticking chewing gum under the railing,

And the page I am reading turns itself, and
The trellis that holds up the rows of grapes
Tumbles over, of its own free will and decay,
Wooden to pieces, stabbed by weather, heart

Impaled by what isn't heart, for a couple
Of hours in the darkness, the time it takes
For night to take hold, when I want the lights
Out or just down for a moment, hand ready on the switch.