Читать книгу Particles: New and Selected Poems - Dan Gerber - Страница 26

from Letters to a Distant Friend

1

Nothing seems to get any better

I have given up waiting for more

Once we had youth on our side

full of promise

Now we are what we are

and struggle with one aging mind

to climb the wall

we no longer believe is there

2

For months we live a day’s trip apart

absorbed in writing flowers for the void

What are they to us

but orphaned children

What are these days that won’t come again

but moments we labor

to preserve our loneliness

5

Another winter morning

I’m expecting your call

I stand close to the window and watch

my breath form a rose on the glass

I scratch your name on it

then wipe it away with my sleeve

listening for your tires

to crunch through the ice on the drive

I notice how snow glistens on the pine boughs

that there’s no wind at all

It’s too cold for my walk

Nothing dares disturb this stillness

I know you aren’t coming

I press my cheek to the window

The telephone rings

My breath forms a rose on the glass

9

Happiness is only one condition

Fools search for it

If you can’t love ashes

what is the sense of burning wood

Too much wine is a pleasure and a pain

If we were together too long

we would fight

A little sadness like salt

enhances the flavor

11

I have been sick and have lost my voice

We haven’t talked for weeks

Tonight you called

and for the first time spoken

you said “I love you”

After all these years these words between friends

I couldn’t speak

but you heard me

13

Each moment we recognize is gone

and so too the days

we try to pin down with words

which are only moments given sound

I live

trying to catch moonlight with the paper

on which I send you this night

14

Looking back

at my footprints in the snow

I wonder

Who is this me

who longs to answer this question

this me

who walked here alone

impudent authority

so far from home

15

Though tonight we are happy

we will come to grief

What of it

If we look for something endless

our lives will be endless looking

Why not settle for this

new wood on the fire

the moon in love

with the new-fallen snow

19

The crescent moon appears in the west

Taking leave, we first see it

though it’s been with us all day

like the sound of a bell

before it’s struck

or the sound of your voice

when I’m far away

20

Even with a continent between us

we hear the same music

rare, even among those who never part

If you die before me

I’ll trace these letters with my finger

in the air

so the birds can fly through them

and translate this song

29

Each day we are faced with having done nothing

no matter what we do

Our lives like the wake of a boat

close behind us

Better not to look from too far away

Only at getting these words down now

then to split wood then to eat lunch

then mail this letter

then to look again at the void

30

I begin this letter

writing the date at the top of the page

like an incantation

for some unnamed thing to take life

Why call it April

when a sudden snow stills the peepers

and I turn from windows where

frost blares against the new green rye

or the sixth day

breaking always into convenient shares

and a year to count our progress

34

I thought of you

as I dropped this Grey Wulff at the base of a stump

I watched the minute dapple of water around it

I waited for some nameless creature to rise

While in the trees above, two herons were resting

a kingfisher rattled and skimmed the surface

and a turtle slid off a log

like the author of a dream

slipping into the day

35

There are nights

I don’t know what to do

with my arms

nights it would be a pleasure

to take them off

to stack them by the bed

and swim like a dolphin

through this dreamless sea

41

A December evening and as it grows dark

the fog becomes pearly above the snow