Gabriel Kahane - Linda & Stuart lyrics

Linda and Stuart, trapped in their apartment
Seventy-ninth and Madison
The one they bought
Fifty years ago no fancy lobby
No baroque Fresco

The deliverymen
In their light blue surgical masks
Knock twice
Leave groceries double bagged at the door
Then cross the street back to the
Shop and to the basement below

Last week I called and asked, "How's
Your relative stock of despair, today?"
Linda replied, saying, "Gabriel
I know I really shouldn't complain
But each month this persists is one
That we're not getting back
For we've little time left
On this spinning marble:
Her point of view I can't dismiss
And what is there to say, in fact?
So I'm left with hollow platitudes to mumble
Straining to hear a few bars
Of the Upper East Side
I find I've not allowed myself
Haven't really had the time
To miss New York, the freak show light

That universe of regret that I keep
Locked in a wooden box
With all the other thoughts and self-pity
Maybe sometime yet I'll hop a
Plane and catch a taxi
Downtown, just to hear the sound
Of the old city

Sirens and the subway and the slurred
Words of the shirt-sleeved men
On the town to toast the close of a deal
That shuttered the last factory in every town
In Michigan, where the union boys are
Stone-faced at the wheel

Linda tells me she's taking a writing class
On the art of the short story
And I say, hey that's great, 'cause
We all need a way to make sense of the world
We all need a way to make sense of the world
We all need a way to make sense of the world