Old Selves
Ok, I no longer want them,
the many selves I had to manage
that once exhausted friends. I believed
in angels then, thought I might be
an angel—that was me, flying off
on a tangent, just so we could land
on one of my many balconies
so we could look down on everyone.
Copyright © 2017 by Ira Sadoff. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 29, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
“When I was younger I believed in that Arthurian quest for self, as if—with sufficient consciousness—I might arrive at some place authentic and fixed. But of course, over time, we have many selves with as many false endings as Beethoven’s Eroica symphony. Every certainty is accompanied by a contingency, a misjudgment, a defensive self-deception, a transformative relationship, a mutable epiphany. So I see ‘Old Selves’ as a tribute to humility, the great gift of time.”
—Ira Sadoff
Ira Sadoff
Ira Sadoff was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 7, 1945,