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The Poetry Of.
Harold Lorin.................................................
Prufrock
Prufrock was but almost the fool.
I, now older even than his poet
Do not dare to ascend the stair.
I do not think I will much advance
In the time that's left to me.
I will they say know Monday
If I will be etherized upon a table.
They will show me the pictures
And say this much is gone, or that much.
You are (or are not) clean.
I do not want to know what I want to know.
To what will I say "that is not it at all?"
More X years or Y months will not be the best.
Those are already gone and unremembered..
I would like to know truly, however,
How painful it might be
And if it now time to talk to someone
About the money I pass to my wife.
Royaument
We have aged in abbeys, grayed in cloisters.
Those albums show us older every year
Weaving like weightless wanderers
Between high columns under capitols elegantly carved.
We have been silent in spaces
Which have been all things in time,
As priests, as penitents, as pilgrims
Passed under the vaultings and the arches.
We began in high sun on the Parthenon
When your hair was black and high, and I
Thought we might together reclaim time.
Carve out our own arches and millennia.
But we faltered in our trips to quietened
Crypts of waiting saints and sleeping kings.
Now we are cold and old in Royaumont
In the lateness of a winter afternoon.
An organ plays us out of the refractory.
Now there is the notion of a final trip.
The stones and columns emptied of our steps.
Rendezvous
Long ago by a fountain in a forest far away
I said to a woman I wished would stay,
"I will wait for you in Alquemar."
Hearing this, of course the woman cried.
But she left anyway. And later,
From news I had of her, I understood that
She had made alternative arrangements.
Now I am old with a woman who will stay
Until the boat departs, and in the fog,
At the river, with our coins enmouthed,
We will plan our reunion on the other side.
She, sensible, practical, efficient.
Know the world is always as it is,
As the boat nears the other shore will say
"Why naturally, as always, and 59th and Park.
