3: Those Indolent Mornings

Those indolent mornings when promise delivered
 Are gone from us
   And so are the younger men that we were once.
We could think it without blushing, we thought it divine,
 How she consecrated to love the energies aroused,
   She as mischievous as a kitten. Or don’t you remember?
If, for pleasure, a man will concoct, believe and say
 What first comes to mind, anything, anything at all,
But if, for the moment, she, muse-like, listens
 And happens to like what she hears,
   Then it’s to the good, even when trouble’s ahead.
                           (Otherwise, Eric, it’s complicated,
               The cosmos running to fatigue and chaos
                  That springs from a tumbling design.)
Even so lilacs appear and the first flies.
Even so a cat sparks the sparrows
 Into chattering alarm. But then hot rhetoric also obtains
On the airwaves to the south. “Nothing new,” you sigh,
 And how right you are, but what’s new are the cold eyes
                                                           in their myriads
   Of stonewall at any price, a constitution hostage
                              to the novelties of vengeance.
But what can I tell you? Why tell you anything?
You know as well as I do what’s shaping up
 Whether or not it shapes your fading interest
As you’ve had existence in those regions
 Where violence was always simmering
   And cotillions were an occasion for pride.
It’s to say we had to assume
 Old worlds would fall and better worlds rise,
When all along it was going to come to this:
 Bad goes to worse, given a chance.

4

  

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