The money, he asks, haven’t you
thought about the money?
We’re feeding her

That rusting water tower collapsing
on its ruin was the movie theater
where you sat in smoky consternation

In the middle of the pandemic, City Lights bookstore is still open and it’s thriving. But yesterday it said goodbye to its eternally hip hundred-and-one-year-old cofounder, the poet, publisher, and community activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

If you are reading this and feeling afraid, this is just to say you are not alone. Panic is, of course, one of the great contagions of a contagion.

Seven years ago I was walking up Fifth Avenue with David Foster Wallace. He wanted to know what I thought of The Names. That one’s the key, he said, speaking of Don DeLillo’s work like it was a safe which contained its own code. It was hat-and-…