Broadway Melody

A naked woman my age is a total nightmare.
A woman my age naked is a nightmare.
It doesn't matter. One doesn't care.
One doesn't say it out loud because it's rare
For anyone to be willing to say it,
Because it's the equivalent of buying billboard space to display it,

Display how horrible life after death is,
How horrible to draw your last breath is,
When you go on living.
I hate the old couples on their walkers giving
Off odors of love, and in City Diner eating a ray
Of hope, and then paying and trembling back out on Broadway,

Drumming and dancing, chanting something nearly unbearable,
Spreading their wings in order to be more beautiful and more terrible.

from Ooga Booga

This is a poem critics might turn to to accuse Seidel of being crass, cruel, and offensive. Well, I think this poem is fabulous. The first two lines make me want to laugh at the speaker (whom I don't presume speaks for Seidel, of course). Poor guy, he is really terrified of women, aging, death, his own aging body. He's been living in a cult of youth and female "perfection," and the walls have come crashing down. His hatred of the old couples on their walkers just makes me love them more. Something amazing happens in the last two lines: angels revealing themselves in all their terror and glory? I don't know, but this sonnet has great control over music, tone, and imagery, and if we let ourselves get in a dither from the first line, we miss it all.