Already in 1927
Summer night in quiet level suburban streets,
lights still on in two out of three houses,
five small green lights edge the driveway
of a brick house two doors down, cold lights
in the warm dark air . . . Hundreds of lives
within three blocks - persons who look away -
and this is only one modest suburb
in North Carolina or Cennecticut. Too many:
persons who are looking away. From you.
But what about 1927? Then too
lamps burned in thousands of windows
within a few miles, and were seen
through the thick of summer night meaning
lives, averted, oblivious, unreachable;
a boy and a girl said goodnight at the door
and from her window she watched him walk away
into the ripe darkness of June 1927. She felt
his steps leading to a city job and other girls,
girls with expensive hats. She felt
so small, lost and small . . .
She sat on her bed for twenty minutes -
then she tied a paisley kerchief in her hair
and washed her face and read a novel by Hardy
and grew up and married a partly good man.
She survived the infinity of 1927:
since already in 1927 the problem was
present with all ingredients, the steps fading,
lamplight cold in the warm air on this block
and the next block . . . So
it's and cold condition. The liquid darkness
and voices from the far side of the playground,
newspaper on the davenport filled
with unromanitic activity, what Coolidge said
about aid to farmers; already in 1927
you had to pass through squares of darkness
and small circles of yellow light alone.
My father, for instance, was thirteen:
he shut the back door and climbed the creaky stairs,
making plans.
***
by Mark Halliday
Mark Halliday Reads
Three of His Favorite Poems
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