Someone asked if poetry can console.
This is a kind of attempt at consolation which fails.
But the attempt I guess is--
the reason for the failure is obvious and important to think
about, at least.
It's called "Visiting a Friend Near Sagamon Hill."
If I take this drive to Sagamon Hill as leisurely as I can,
I may remember, by the time I spot my friend's house,
my speech of consolation, which so far seems
to have hidden itself among the speeches, powerless to console.
The ones that silence would be an improvement on.
The drive over is beautiful, the road
winding through woods with a good smell, the sunlight
filtered and shimmering.
No reason for me to say I'm not one
of the lucky ones, kin to these towering birch and sycamore--
lucky like them to have grown on well-drained soil,
in unstinted sun, smiled on, as Homer might say, by Hyperion.
Not like the stunted, scrubby ones rooting below in
marshland.
Those marsh trees are like my sick friend
whose life hasn't been sent to test him, but to sap him,
to wear him down.
One life, and he knows that his one hope now
is to be two people--
the sufferer and the one who observes his suffering
from above, as calmly as Zeus observes from grassy Ida
the armies about Troy, at ease in the best seat in the house.
That's it down there, the little dark spot
balancing the highlights on the other side.
The scene lingers a moment and then fades.
Zeus drifts back to the clouds.
My friend discovers himself in bed listening
as a car crunches in the gravel drive,
hoping that the visitor's cheer won't make him gloomy--
that he still wishes the living well.