Daily Poem: Two Roads, etc. ~ Dorothy Walters
Two Roads, etc.
~ Dorothy Walters
For Carolyn Kizer
(Carolyn Kizer’s poem which inspired Walters was the Daily Poem for July 16, 2018 and can be read here)
Here I am,
Novice of many years,
Still writing poems
Full of betrayal and lost love,
Forever turning the events of my life
In my hand
Like a strange stone
To be examined in the light
Of Tragedy.
She, meanwhile,
With a shrug of one shoulder,
Says,
“By the time we reach middle life,
We’ve all been deserted and robbed,”
And goes on to the next stanza.
Well, none would dispute her.
But to take the news so calmly.
To let go the bar
And go whizzing through space
Humming a little tune to oneself.
True, she’s lived deep:
Slept with famous poets,
Brows and all,
Got divorced once or twice,
Was rejoiced at seeing afar
The naked genitals of Chinese laborers
When she was “very young”.
When I was very young,
I scanned the diagrams
Of ancient medical texts.
And was properly shaken.
Poets were names in books,
Their brows the windy heights,
Unscaled, of accompanying illustrations.
In that country, life was real
Only the way a poem is real
When it is about to be written.
Merwin said: “This way the dust,
That way the dust,”
And Yeats, earlier,
“Everything we look upon is blest,”
Both, of course, being perfectly correct.
