A lot of poetry and, I think, an awful lot of poetic expression
is really about the ephemeral nature of things.
And, as I get older, I really find
that the old-timers were really right in concentrating on that.
Back in the days when I studied literature
in the 1950's, dark ages, they used to hammer into our heads
the idea of ubi sunt.
You know, Latin, where are they now?
All of these people that we knew, all of these things,
they're all gone.
Where do things go?
Where do people disappear to?
Where does the past disappear to?
And I think that's as proper a subject for poetry as anything
because it is very odd.
This moment that we call "now" has
been preceded by billions and billions and billions
of moments, each of which was once now.
And these are-- it's a very obvious kind of mystery,
but we live in, as I said before, a very prosaic era.
And people don't-- you know, you don't have time to stop
and think about stuff like that.
Poets sometimes do, so I'm always chasing those ghosts.
This is a poem about arriving in Lisbon, in Portugal, years
ago, when Salazar was still in power,
and having taken a Portuguese freighter all the way there.
And I wanted to write a poem about this for years.
And it's really funny.
You think that something happens to you
and you sit down in the heat of the moment and you write it.
Sometimes it works that way.
You can write it in five minutes.
Other times, it takes years to figure out what went on.
And this one took years.
And finally, I wrote this.
It'll be in TriQuarterly, I just remembered, this fall.
So you can sit down and read it in slow motion.
It's called, "Saudades, The Portuguese Blues."
"Perched at the railing of a Portuguese freighter,
frightened inside, wavelengths from home and known to no one
here except the not-so-secret police,
I'm struck by how that brown-skinned girl
in a moon-knit dress and Sunday pumps beams from the pier
below.
Already, I know next to nothing about her,
and soon I'll know even less.
But nothing could have possibly prepared me
for her long-distance smile that gently
bridges the mileage anywhere.
How can I not be gladdened by sharing the way
she shines in the late Lisbon light, a quivering blue glow
seeping into the deep and rolling sea.
Just see how she sways and waves at the sight
of her father, the seaman.
The ship's wireless operator, positioned just now at my left,
right beside me.
He is back in contact with his proudest connection,
this motherless angel he's been bragging
about like a daddy, all the way over from steamy Brooklyn
to the shores of the Azores and on to the mainland
and islands of me.
Shaken to discover myself so removed from all the family
I've ever known, I couldn't be happier
than I am now, watching him hurry down the gangplank home.
They charge into each other's arms
and then, peering up, squinting, shading his eyes,
he signals me his last farewell.
Ah, well, this is where I become a stranger again.
An unraveled, woolly-minded, off-season traveler all
decked out with no place else to go and no one
to answer at these ports of call.
Soon we'll be free to be memories of each other,
but for one skylit minute, radiant and radio clear,
another part of my head snaps on.
It begins to crackle with a pop song
from long ago about kisses and fundamental things.
And time and I go drifting by.
We flow with the last of the cool, salty light,
out across the dark dock water that
cradles this crusty old boat.
In fact, as I shoulder my pack of belongings,
a longing overcomes me, and for chorus after chorus, I
can still feel that flow, feel it pulling us apart,
feel it nudging the swollen summer toward fall.
Sighing, descending now, I can even
feel how time will feel as it lightens
my momentary burden of being all too young, all too wise,
and all too deliriously alone."
It takes a long time to see yourself like that.