After reading Nightingale

It is June. The city sweats out of its pores
As it moves; the lethargic step of still air
is finally come; oh how much I love it!
The humidity, how it clings and it bores;
The balmy fuel, the ancestral furnace,
the way it bites — how it gives, how it goes.

It is true that nothing happens while we live,
But on the way I have seen the glare and felt the steam;
I have shopped at the market and had an iced tea,
I felt my tired walking feet in a fiery moment

With joyful tears I saw that I could reach;
Stretch out my weak arms and take off.

We have run out of metaphors
and there is no more perfect one than the phoenix:
To burn — I want your heat to destroy me, atomic god!
Scorch me, evaporate me, return me to the air
Give me lift so I am not trapped in a dirty sod
And I can know the bird that the poet knows.

I shall hear waves I’ve heard before
And I’ll go bling of folly with your painful glow
Meet your golden glare, but I will know it all;
As it was written on a Keatsian ode.