POEMS
Self-Portrait on Fortieth Birthday
I spent it alone on the freezing docks (Matthew Arnold said a man’s life is over at thirty). My mood was lower than ever (Moods are a big influence on our being, Heidegger thought). I saw my twenties (The Jazz Age); my old girlfriends (Simenon slept with 10,000 women); my long mornings bent over poems (St. Jerome in his study). In the end, a professorship. I arrived in time to please my grandparents (Ellis Island passage, 1907). You’re a figure, regardless of the cost (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus). I seemed slightly larger then, and the world seemed more promising, higher up (Silent upon a peak in Darien). Now I’m the only one wondering: when will I set sail, and when will I find that small town (Jerusalem) among the rocks?
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