Poem on My Eighty-Seventh Birthday—A Confession

It is March—I have stumbled into my eighty-eighth year
since that winter of nineteen thirty-five
when I twisted my soul into the squealing flesh
of a frail, new-born body on a new-born earth.

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My world was me; a patch of desire, an island,
a safe, wondering land in a warm sea.
I sucked at the breast and sucked at the sun and the songs,
my mother’s gentle songs she sang to herself
like a tiny bird.

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                       What else fed my life?
Music there was, sounding throughout the house,
and father’s voice—I can hear it—reciting Shakespeare—
Oh, it was light, it was luminous, bright with love!
But later—a dreamy boy, in school and out—
the squawk of teachers shrilled into my daydreams
hauling me back to the school day.
                                                    Then those boys,
their fists beating me down for the sins of the Jews
and the death of Jesus, shouting, You killed our god!
I didn’t.
          Weeping homeward:
                                      They killed God!

But all through my life, there are moments—unforeseen
and sudden—they hold me, dazzle me, force me to see;
moments of beauty, moments of silent assent.
Even now, in the darkening world, a light
will burst, surpassing the light of common day.

How to seize it, own it, tell it, sing,
embody it in some shape or sound or act—
spin that word-web, shining, out of my blood,
shape some full, ripe shape of words to save,
to defend from going, all that goes and goes!
Hard! Hard to keep my gaze on the light
and still maneuver the concrete-gray ways.

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And so I became a man-of-a-hundred-mistakes,
blundering on, trying a hundred trades,
ever distracted by something not in the rules—
as a soldier, mumbling Shakespeare on maneuvers,
lost in the sessions of sweet silent thought
(those words I mumbled), how could I hear the command
Gas masks on! The yelling! The shouts of the sergeants!
The curses! You! The deaf one! Pushups! Ten!
There! In the mud!
                            Or the jobs and jobs and jobs,
stealing time on the job to command an image,
a metaphor, a rebellious gang of words
that struggle against the stern demands of song—

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Ah, once more it is March; I dodder along,
warming my hands, buying too many sweaters.
Another birthday declares this old guy lives,
has not yet stumbled off to the World of Truth—
he still spins out those webs of words to trap
that light. This old poet still walks
the sounding world—
                              humming his own song.

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