A Poem for Paul Smith

Overhead the flickering bulb
buzzes, pops and hisses;
the clock-hands move:
three petty tyrants,
unhurried, self-assured.

What is this pressure
at the base of the ear? Silence
in the muddle—the middle
of the stream, crossing
to the other bank?
What paralysis grips?
What agency demands this
vacant stare?

You ask me to write a poem
in answer to a question I ask again:
“What can I do for you?”

Looking back and looking forward,
the present consumed by seemingly
inconsequential things which, taken together
mount to matters of great weight and urgency:
a huge library to dispose of,
the question of who gets what,
the agony of weighing the value of a friendship—
more presence than you bargained for;
less time for reflection than assumed—
strange that!

And they say time flies!
It doesn’t. It creeps. It steals.

And now the wet expanse shows no sign
where a child, stick in hand, wrote his name:
the grey clay cleft has nearly closed completely
as if some wondrous maiden—some mud—some mudder
of millions, suddenly, miraculously:— a virgin again!

Three four, six, nine
skips across the water,
lapping, at the nearer
and the farther shore,

our names, my friend,
in water or in sand—

only a moment more.


© Dan Goorevitch, 2005