I LOVE This Poem

Newspaper Nights

by Louis Simpson

After midnight when the presses were rolling
we would leave the Herald Tribune building
and walk up to Times Square.
The three of us would still be laughing and joking.

I can see a sign that says Schenley.
There are numbers high on a building
telling the time, 12:27,
the temperature, 36.

We have the streets all to ourselves.
There is only the sound of an ambulance or a fire.
There are only the lights that still keep changing
from green to red and back to green in silence.

by Louis Simpson from Collected Poems. © Paragon House Publishers, 1988.