Days Like This
Days like this I wait for inspiration clearing my mind of calculation
of desire of ambition especially fleeing from numbers/ I practice patience
I think good thoughts of things that seem to matter and I frown steadily on the
trivial which cowers in a closet
I think of my tiny grandson who is himself inspired who speaks only enough
to marshal action/ I envy him his economy of language his authority over a
world of giants
I think of my grown sons who are polar on the compass and of the mysterious
architecture of becoming that bifurcates my nature into theirs yet preserves
the authenticity of all of us/ I think of it in wonder
I think of my ‘found’ children into whose garden I have stumbled of the nest
in which I imagine them waiting to be fed and when I do not think of them
as birds I think of them as flowers
I think of stolid summer all around us women’s bodies lightly covered infants
naked in pools of shining water and of their mothers shepherding their
harvest of lambs/ I think of expectation
I think of the weight of longing of its faces and voices/ of those longings
doomed to failure of longings out of the wishfulness of sorrow of the
longings I will bury with my name the longings that will tick in me forever
I think of women neutrally with quiet pleasure as befits my twilight legacy
and of their beauty even in imperfection of their permanence in the heart’s
treasure and especially of those who were willing to grant me shelter
I think of loneliness and I hope it thinks of me/ lonely since the first parting
partings which have multiplied to many
I think of poets beneath an alphabet of burdens soaking in a river of memories
I admire the clamor they raise in the face of death and silence I think of
Vallejo Valery Cavafy I think of all the others
Days like this I wish I were touching someone’s hand or lips or supple waist
I wish I had not joined my character and its fate I wish I had been another
unaffected by this uncertain fire/ less riven less guilty less ashamed
Dense days like this under the inexorable hum of air conditioners/ sheltered
from the pestilence of heat my soul abandons my body and I forget I am a
simple man/ days like this I wait for joy to ask me in for events to turn my
way for the words to be found to inject consolation into my frame and allow
me some abatement
I think of this I think of more thinking through my long tunnel of recollection
and thinking through my full firmament of deeds and while thinking I write
these words waiting to be emancipated or enslaved writing perhaps from
loss of nerve or from exhausted patience I write these words without the
gloss of inspiration from some vestigial reserve of dumb determination
I write these words hoping to be heard
6/25-6/30/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
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