A Worldly Country: New Poems

A Worldly Country: New Poems

<p>Thrill of a Romance </p><p>It's different when you have hiccups. <br />Everything is€"so many glad hands competing <br />for your attention, a scarf, a puff of soot, <br />or just a blast of silence from a radio. <br />What is it? That's for you to learn <br />to your dismay when, at the end of a long queue <br />in the cafeteria, tray in hand, they tell you the gate closed down <br />after the Second World War. Syracuse was declared capital <br />of a nation in malaise, but the directorate <br />had other, hidden goals. To proclaim logic <br />a casualty of truth was one. <br /></p><p>Everyone's solitude (and resulting promiscuity) <br />perfumed the byways of villages we had thought civilized. <br />I saw you waiting for a streetcar and pressed forward. <br />Alas, you were only a child in armor. Now when ribald toasts <br />sail round a table too fair laid out, why the consequences <br />are only dust, disease and old age. Pleasant memories <br />are just that. So I channel whatever <br />into my contingency, a vein of mercury <br />that keeps breaking out, higher up, more on time <br />every time. Dirndls spotted with obsolete flowers, <br />worn in the city again, promote open discussion.<br /></p>