Denise Levertov Poems 1960-1967 by Denise Levertov

Author:Denise Levertov [Levertov, Denise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 2013-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Old Adam

A photo of someone else’s childhood,

a garden in another country—world

he had no part in and has no power to imagine:

yet the old man who has failed his memory

keens over the picture—Them happy days—

gone—gone for ever!’—glad for a moment to suppose

a focus for unspent grieving, his floating

sense of loss.

He wanders

asking the day of the week, the time,

over and over the wrong questions.

Missing his way in the streets

he acts out

the bent of his life,

the lost way

never looked for, life

unlived, of which he is dying

very slowly.

‘A man,’

says his son, ‘who never

made a right move in all his life.’ A man

who thought the dollar was sweet and

couldn’t make a buck, riding the subway

year after year to untasted sweetness,

loving his sons obscurely, incurious

who they were, these men, his sons—

a shadow of love, for love longs

to know the beloved, and a light goes with it

into the dark mineshafts of feeling… A man

who now, without knowing,

in endless concern for the smallest certainties,

looking again and again at a paid bill,

inquiring again and again, ‘When was I here last?’

asks what it’s too late to ask:

‘Where is my life? Where is my life?

What have I done with my life?’

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