Читать книгу Common Sense - Ted Greenwald - Страница 9

WHIFF

An evening

Spent talking

Spent thinking

About what my life would be

If I’d stayed

With a particular girl or woman

I went with

What would be

If FdVe been accepted to and gone

Where I applied

To a different school

Than the one I did

Where I’d learned

Different social graces

Than the ones I have

Where some of the material

Values of the American dream

Had rubbed off

Enough to make me

Live it out

In the good-works sense

If I’d settled down

And settled

For the foundation

On a house

For future generations

Instead of assuming

Immediately past generations

My foundation to mine

If I’d been

A little quicker to learn

What was expected of me

And wanting to please pleased

Going on that way

Through all eternity

Fve probably been saved

From mere routines

By a streak of stubbornness

By a slow mind

And tendency to drift

By an emotional development

That requires

My personal understanding

Before happening

Feeling out the implications

An emotion has in

Form of expectation

Before trying out and

After awareness

I sense a willingness

To tell someone

I know and like

And sense the same from

Anything they’d like to know

About me

And, at the same time, have

A vast sense of privacy

Which means

There’s no way

I’ll wear out my personality

And its sense of continuity

Although sometimes

I feel empty

But talking to

Someone I like

And trust

And sense the same from

I feel way up

And after a long evening

Of talk about this and that

Feel wide awake

And feel the world

Wide and awake around me

And have a visual intensity

In memory

That, in near memory, dulls

And throbs

And grows vivid as hell

When I bring it to mind

Some time from then

What my life

Would’ve been like

Under different circumstances

WouldVe been different

With its own

Attendant ifs

And its own what-might’ve-been

But this way

Fve elected to follow

And cast my vote

Each waking day in

I avoid

The possibility

Of taking the past too seriously

Or feeling any bitterness

Or sadness

This way

When my ship comes in

FHVe passed out of mind

Beyond the sight of land

And won’t hesitate

For a second

To look back on all this

With fondness or remiss

The air’ll be clear

The moon’ll be there

And you, whoever

You are and hope to be,

Will be here with my love