Just yesterday afternoon I heard a man Say he lived in a house with no windows The door of which was locked on the outside. This was at a party in New York, New York. A deep Oriental type, I said to myself, One of them indescribable Tebootans who Live up on Quaker Heights and drink Mulled kvass first thing every morning With their vitamins. An asshole. And Haven't I more years than he? Haven't I spent them looking out the window At the trees? Oh the various trees. They have looked back at me with their Homely American faces: the hemlocks And white birches of one of my transient Homes, the catalpas and honey locusts Of another, the sweet gum and bay and Coffee trees, the hop hornbeam and the Spindle tree, the dogwood, the great Horse chestnut, the overdressed pawpaw Who is the gamine of that dominion. Then, behind them, the forest, the sodality. What pizzazz in their theorizing! How fat The sentimentibilities of their hosannas! I have looked at them out the window So intently and persistently that always My who-I-am has gone out among them Where the fluttering ideas beckon. Yes, We've been best friends these sixty-nine Years, standing around this hot stove Of a world, hawking, phewing, guffawing, My dear ones, who will remember me For a long, long time when I'm gone. 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...QUI S'EXCUSE S'ACCUSE by MARIANNE MOORE RENASCENCE by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY KEEPING ENDLESS HOLIDAY by TITUS PETRONIUS NIGER PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 16. AL-KAHHAR by EDWIN ARNOLD THE SECOND VOLUME by ROBERT MOWRY BELL BAB-LOCK-HYTHE by LAURENCE BINYON |