I saw a man crushed in the subway Four years back Some college kid from Queens
Traded shoves on the platform With some desperate debased drunk Who dragged them to the tracks As the train came His scramble too slow by a second
Surprise on his face When they wrenched his pulp From between the car and the platform I was gone by the time he died Gasping in the ambulance
There must’ve been hundreds Who saw him there stricken Their voices burst forth fluid And we all drowned in the flood
The sight of him sodden in unwilling eyes His life seeping down into concrete Into the records that name and contain us When our lovely shells are gone
The numbers go up and up But the sum never makes sense