Your voice comes to me, George, on the winter night In the faint mazy stars, a murmur of hesitant light In the air frozen solid, it seems, from here to Maine. Lonely and late I made pancakes, awful pancakes, And ate them with watery syrup and grease and with Love of myself when young, with cognac in a glass, And with cigarettes, the smoke coiling reflected In the black window. What are you saying, George? I strain to hear. Are you as smart and percipient As you were, can you tell me what I almost know In your words not mine as you used to, words So French and accurate I thought Descartes And Camus must live in you as well as Tolstoy And Kropotkin, words of fierce loyalties and loves For beautiful ideas and men and women? Tell me, George, for Michael your boy's sake, where are you, When will we see you, have your bones become dust, Is your voice dust in your throat? Oh, let the thin Dawn come now with its fishblood on the horizon, Its icy fog. You are the lovingest memory in this Rattling brain that shakes off its synapses like an old Dog climbing out of a cold brook. George, George, What in God's name must I do to get you back? Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DYING DECADENT by LOUIS UNTERMEYER SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT [1583] by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW MY SISTER'S SLEEP by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI MACGREGOR'S GATHERING by WALTER SCOTT ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: 109 by PHILIP SIDNEY THE APPROACH OF LOVE by LOUIS ARAGON WARPED FLOWER by SHEILA BARBOUR FRAGMENTS INTENDED FOR DEATH'S JEST-BOOK: COUNTENANCE FOREBODING EVIL by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES |