Night and Day

With my low rent and my solitude and my Bachelor's
in English, I'm on the West Coast, I'm getting religious
and I'm up to my elbows in dishwater
and I hear voices: Blessed art thou, God of our Fathers,
they say, chanting name after name, from Abraham
to the present, stopping predictably, at the name
of my father. Sunlight through the orange curtains
blotched whitish-brown, like a mishap from bleach—O Father,
these dishes are covered with suds! these greasy plates
and these pots with burnt food on the bottom and the slimy
peanut butter knives, the whole kitchen underwater,
its dark blue cabinets and sky blue ceiling
and the mobile with yellow fish. Outside, unclouded sky—
endless background for the plum tree, white blossoms
stretching over the sun-burned lawn—
O civil servant watching the world from the suburbs
in the East, New York City papers spread open
like maps on your desk, routes to Swing Street
and to Pizer and Dubinsky making their speeches—
it's 1992, the pale sky and plum blossoms like
ex-communists, denouncing poetry, refusing to talk,
the ghosts are talking, I hear you among them, "it doesn't get
better than this, this is heaven."

Comments

[Rebecca]

What a beautiful poem! It brought tears to my eyes -- the line about the civil servant watching from the suburbs of the east especially.