Nostalgia
By Billy Collins
Remember
the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You
always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I
was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones
with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone
would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at
night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything
was hand-lettered then, not like today.
Where
has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons
were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival
baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on
the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while
your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We
borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These
days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.
The
1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People
would take walks to the very tops of hills
and
write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our
collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would
surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a
wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
I am
very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe
trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I
would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time
enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot
me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture
the serenity of last month when we picked
berries
and glided through afternoons in a canoe.
Even
this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in
the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the
Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash
off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and
silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.
As
usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting
my memory rush over them like water
rushing
over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was
even thinking a little about the future, that place
where
people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance
whose name we can only guess.
REFLECTIVE MUSIC: Sentimental Journey
Beginning With an Acute Stab of Nostalgia, It Gets Worse
and Worse
By Arthur
Vogelsang
I called Hart on my longer
distance line
And in case you didn’t know
he is in heavine.
Hart, I implored, I searched
your book
(Yes, you have a Collected)
and could fine
Nothing about the 36 cast
iron bridges in
Central Park, why didn’t you
write about one
At least. He said he wrote
about the narrow Bow Bridge
For peds built in 1878 which
is sad and fine
And always photographed
through branches in the foregrine
Which was sufficiently sad to
make him weep all the tine
He was trying to write the
poem so he threw it away.
He tried again and he
uncontrollably wept agine.
Did you try a third tine,
I asked. No, he said, and
here’s why:
Life is uncontrollably sad
all the time
Unless we divert ourselves
with art objects,
Sex, or tequila or beer, and
if we tell the truth
About this, for instance when
we feel it
While looking at a photograph
of the cast ine
Bow Bridge or see in life not
photos but the real bridge at a short destine
Away with the actual park and
branches around us,
We feel like killing
ourselves to stop the pain
Or as you, Arthur, call it,
the pine,
So I didn’t try a third time
To write the poem. Get off
this line,
He said. Wait! Don’t hang up,
he said, I take it back, stay on the phine!
Well, I considered calling on
my second longer distance line
Kenneth who in heavine has
changed his name to Kenneth Kine
And Barbara who I did call on
my second longer distance line
With Hart on hold and
affirmed her name change to Barbara Gine
But I didn’t ask those
younger two about uncontrollable totally dominant sadness
Or whether they had discarded
their own poems about the 36 cast ine
Bridges for people to walk on
in Central Park
Because they were weeping on
the paper and pine
Ing for Hart’s Big Deep Salty
Lake to ease the pine.
I didn’t call Frank because I
never knew hine I mean him.
I figured the next step was
mine.
So if you can believe it I
hung up on Hart Crine.
REFLECTIVE MUSIC: Central Park West by John Coltrane
Nostalgia (The Lake at Night)
By Lloyd
Schwartz
The black water.
Lights dotting the entire
perimeter.
Their shaky reflections.
The dark tree line.
The plap-plapping of water
around the pier.
Creaking boats.
The creaking pier.
Voices in conversation, in
discussion—two men, adults—serious inflections
(the words themselves just
out of reach).
A rusty screen-door spring,
then the door swinging shut.
Footsteps on a porch, the
scrape of a wooden chair.
Footsteps shuffling through
sand, animated youthful voices (how many?)— distinct, disappearing.
A sudden guffaw; some
giggles; a woman’s—no, a young girl’s—sarcastic reply; someone’s assertion; a
high-pitched male cackle.
Somewhere else a child
laughing.
Bug-zappers.
Tires whirring along a
pavement... not stopping ... receding.
Shadows from passing
headlights.
A cat’s eyes caught in a headlight.
No moon.
Connect-the-dot
constellations filling the black sky—the ladle of the Big Dipper not quite
directly overhead.
The radio tower across the
lake, signaling.
Muffled quacking near the
shore; a frog belching; crickets, cicadas, katydids, etc.—their relentless
sexual messages.
A sudden gust of wind.
Branches brushing against
each other—pine, beech.
A fiberglass hull tapping
against the dock.
A sudden chill.
The smell of smoke, woodstove
fires.
A light going out.
A dog barking; then more
barking from another part of the lake.
A burst of quiet laughter.
Someone in the distance
calling someone too loud.
Steps on a creaking porch.
A screen-door spring, the
door banging shut.
Another light going out (you
must have just undressed for bed).
My bare feet on the splintery
pier turning away from the water.
REFLECTIVE MUSIC: Mist Over the Lake by Jan Freidlin
Better Days
By A. F.
Moritz
Never anymore in a wash of
sweetness and awe
does the summer when I was
seventeen come back
to mind against my will, like
a bird crossing
my vision. Summer of moist
nights full of girls
and boys ripened, holy
drunkenness and violation
of the comic boundaries,
defiances that never
failed or brought disaster.
Days on the backs
and in the breath of horses,
between rivers
and pools that reflected the
cicadas' whine,
enervation and strength
creeping in smooth waves
over muscular water. All
those things accepted,
once, with unnoticing hunger,
as an infant
accepts the nipple, never
come back to mind
against the will. What comes
unsummoned now,
blotting out every other
thought and image,
is a part of the past not so
deep or far away:
the time of poverty, of
struggle to find means
not hateful—the muddy
seedtime of early manhood.
What returns are those
moments in the diner
night after night with each
night's one cup of coffee,
watching an old man, who
always at the same hour
came in and smiled, ordered
his tea and opened
his drawing pad. What did he
fill it with?
And where's he gone? Those
days, that studious worker,
hand moving and eyes eager in
the sour light,
that artist always in the
same worn-out suit,
are my nostalgia now. That
old man comes back,
the friend I saw each day and
never spoke to,
because I hoped soon to
disappear from there,
as I have disappeared, into
the heaven of better days.
REFLECTIVE MUSIC: Reflections on Air by Augusta Gross
The Garden Buddha
By Peter
Pereira
Gift of a friend, the stone
Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his
chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the
riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city
in the distance—always
the same bountiful smile upon
his portly face.
Why don’t I share his
one-minded happiness?
The pear blossom, the
crimson-petaled magnolia,
filling me instead with a
mixture of nostalgia
and yearning. He’s laughing at me, isn’t he?
The seasons wheeling despite
my photographs
and notes, my desire to make
them pause.
Is that the lesson? That stasis, this holding on,
is not life? Now I’m smiling, too—the late cherry,
its soft pink blossoms
already beginning to scatter;
the trillium, its
three-petaled white flowers
exquisitely tinged with
purple as they fall.
REFLECTIVE MUSIC: Sonata for Flute & Harp (movement 2) by Jean-Michel Damase
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