These permanencies remain.
Arched windows
Through which the browned leaf
Reflects the end of season.
Soft swell of music from
Antiphonal choirs faced off
Across the church loft.
The transient put aside
Here by the altar
Where I place myself
Midway between two voices
Heard as one.
Some sat here other Sundays
Took bread and wine
Witnessed marriage
Mourned the departed
Like Clara Stevens
Laid to rest in 1926
With thanks
For fifty selfless years
Of teaching Sunday school.
The choirmaster claps hands
In the loft above.
”Start again at letter C.
There’s time
Before the audience arrives
To do it right.”
–Susan Schefflein
Draft © 2005 S. Schefflein All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
James Wright ‘s “Two Hangovers”
(From The Branch Will Not Break, 1963
Submitted by Susan)
Number One
I slouch in bed.
Beyond the streaked trees of my window,
All groves are bare.
Locusts and poplars change to unmarried women
Sorting slate from anthracite
Between railroad ties:
The yellow-bearded winter of the depression
Is still alive somewhere, an old man
Counting his collection of bottle caps
In a tarpaper shack under the cold trees
Of my grave.
I still feel half drunk,
And all those old women beyond my window
Are hunching toward the graveyard.
Drunk, mumbling Hungarian,
The sun staggers in,
And his big stupid face pitches
Into the stove.
For two hours I have been dreaming
Of green butterflies searching for diamonds
In coal seams;
And children chasing each other for a game
Through the hills of fresh graves.
But the sun has come home drunk from the sea,
And a sparrow outside
Sings of the Hanna Coal Co. and the dead moon.
The filaments of cold light bulbs tremble
In music like delicate birds.
Ah, turn it off.
Number Two:
I Try to Waken and Greet the World Once Again
In a pine tree,
A few yards away from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do
That the branch will not break.
Submitted by Susan)
Number One
I slouch in bed.
Beyond the streaked trees of my window,
All groves are bare.
Locusts and poplars change to unmarried women
Sorting slate from anthracite
Between railroad ties:
The yellow-bearded winter of the depression
Is still alive somewhere, an old man
Counting his collection of bottle caps
In a tarpaper shack under the cold trees
Of my grave.
I still feel half drunk,
And all those old women beyond my window
Are hunching toward the graveyard.
Drunk, mumbling Hungarian,
The sun staggers in,
And his big stupid face pitches
Into the stove.
For two hours I have been dreaming
Of green butterflies searching for diamonds
In coal seams;
And children chasing each other for a game
Through the hills of fresh graves.
But the sun has come home drunk from the sea,
And a sparrow outside
Sings of the Hanna Coal Co. and the dead moon.
The filaments of cold light bulbs tremble
In music like delicate birds.
Ah, turn it off.
Number Two:
I Try to Waken and Greet the World Once Again
In a pine tree,
A few yards away from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do
That the branch will not break.
Harry Krishna (Jim)
Harry Krishna
Used to be
My life was filled with me
and me, me, me.
I had this little ego prob
you see.
But now I never fumble
at being humble –
and I'm so proud
I could should aloud.
–Jim Keller
1983 (or thereabouts)
Draft © 2005 J. Keller All Rights Reserved.
In some perverse way I miss those
guys in the airports........
Used to be
My life was filled with me
and me, me, me.
I had this little ego prob
you see.
But now I never fumble
at being humble –
and I'm so proud
I could should aloud.
–Jim Keller
1983 (or thereabouts)
Draft © 2005 J. Keller All Rights Reserved.
In some perverse way I miss those
guys in the airports........
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