Poem

Writer's Note: I wrote this poem in the early 1990s, and it was inspired by different ideas and perceptions and the fact of a new friend, whose acquaintance I renewed this year.


A Classical Simplicity

My friend, I lived through the age of superstition
fear ignorance youth the rule of nature
and the age of reason
coldness knowledge maturity the rule of man
and each has it own monsters
monsters glimpsed through the night blinds
of partially closed windows
monsters glimpsed through the lines
of partially wise manifestoes
and still I'm trying to guess what come next
by closely reading each new text
thrilling at words whose realities I recognize--
ambiguity, fragmentation, the price of progress.

You return me to my younger self
with questions of a classical simplicity:
What are you feeling?
What does she mean to you now?
What will you do?
You have begun to live in me now
like a man in a story I must write or tell,
and this is my desire, this is my fear.
Let us not be those hollow men
for whom only words are alive.
Let us cling to the truths of our differing
ages, and create anew with each other and others.


(c) DG