December 2020
Bio Note: The year is drawing to an end and with it, for me, a semester of teaching talented and patient students remotely.
Even from a distance, it’s a privilege.
I’d forgotten the verses below. Stumbling on the poem evoked for me the time and emotions that prompted it and the vividness of that recollection, along with its seasonal report, made me think it might be good enough to submit to V-V.
I’d forgotten the verses below. Stumbling on the poem evoked for me the time and emotions that prompted it and the vividness of that recollection, along with its seasonal report, made me think it might be good enough to submit to V-V.
To Have Seen What I Have Seen, See What I See
It’s barely autumn now, nor is
summer yet wholly out of mind.
Gray rain is falling on fallen
leaves, colder than it used to be
when that willow tree looked young,
when my wish was only to begin.
Some say that all things have their worth
and what shall be is what has been.
The raindrops dangle in a dance
on these autumnal afternoons:
summer’s rain was blurred with heat,
spring’s beat all, depraved and rushed;
dire will be the winter storm,
silent before the blizzard comes.
But nothing is phenomenal
about these long November rains
that show more bleakly for all their
confinement to the window panes.
These traceries I moralize
and think of weather in the mind;
yet every effort that I make
obscures the meaning that I find.
The meaning that I find feels forced,
too false to let conviction hold.
And so, it scarcely matters if
what is now is what once was
or if the window pane reflects
those pictures one already knows:
unhappiness, a child’s ghost,
or joy, an old man in repose.
Originally published in Orphic Lute
©2020 Robert Wexelblatt
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It is very important. -JL