Let me read some newer poems--
past, Collecting the Animals.
I guess some of these are finished,
and perhaps some of them are not.
This is a poem called "The Burden of Decision."
I don't quite know how to describe
or set up the poem for you.
Years ago, because of coercion, not willingly, I read an essay
called de Senectute, an essay on old age.
And I've forgotten who wrote it--
Cicero, one of those, perhaps Seneca.
Who knows?
But it was an essay that, in one sense,
praised the virtues of growing old.
It said you grew wiser and more mature,
and the passions cooled down, and people respected you,
and all sorts of lovely things.
Well, I don't think he told too much of the truth,
but it was a lovely style.
And in a sense, this poem comes back
to that kind of preoccupation-- how
we're supposed to get older and wiser
and make all the right choices and how
we value that sense of decision and choice.
This is called "The Burden of Decision."
"Late night, with my bundle of new straws,
weighing each one with my headaches,
my inverted stars, my solemn pencils at their end.
in this way, sorting the 'yes' and the 'no,' I arrive.
My train enters a snowy region of furs.
I close my eyes.
The wheels slow and deepen their voices over the first bridge.
It is then that one knocks and enters.
A man puts down his bag and slaps dust from his coat.
In silence, he crosses the room, nods, and holds out
to me his two closed hands.
I know him by his frayed sleeves.
He knows me by the little song I start to sing,
shifting from foot to foot."