Trust me I’m really trying to pay attention
but it’s harder every day
& so I begin to trust only in appearances not
“authenticity”—that half truth—
Growing so precisely redacted it’s even less
now than what it once seemed
So I can’t help it & maybe I’m doing all right?—
someone else has to tell me
I spend all my time in meetings & almost none
with the few people I love
Still my house is beautiful it’s filled with books
& filled with light & filled too
With eloquent recordings of music at the end
of the world & also with the grace
Of the woman who’s made this house of paper
songs & tied my hand-inked messages
With black ribbons to those thin branches
above the brick walkway
Leading to our door as it’s now the single way
I’ll actually write to people
& how do I look to you these days?—& really
who remembers it all as you do?—
& when the night-blooming jasmine smells so
delicious I love just sitting here
Shredding on Lance’s custom shop Les Paul—
my vintage Vox amp cranked up
So high no microphone could salvage those lyrics
of pure human spittle you know
That song I mean the one about all of us—fiercely
irrelevant & yet so briefly alive
From The Last Troubadour (Ecco Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by David St. John. Used with permission of the author.
O Me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
This poem is in the public domain.
The night turns slowly round,
Swift trains go by in a rush of light;
Slow trains steal past.
This train beats anxiously, outward bound.
But I am not here.
I am away, beyond the scope of this turning;
There, where the pivot is, the axis
Of all this gear.
I, who sit in tears,
I, whose heart is torn with parting;
Who cannot bear to think back to the departure platform;
My spirit hears
Voices of men
Sound of artillery, aeroplanes, presences,
And more than all, the dead-sure silence,
The pivot again.
There, at the axis
Pain, or love, or grief
Sleep on speed; in dead certainty;
Pure relief.
There, at the pivot
Time sleeps again.
No has-been, no here-after; only the perfected
Silence of men.
This poem is in the public domain.