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Gerald Solomon Page 3 A Certain Silence
Go home, shut the
door, sit in the kitchen,
try once more a
certain silence?
Hmm....
disappointed.
And the past too has
its feelings.
So what, looking
back, take to heart?...
Dozy I may be at
Homer's tedious brawl―
but kind, crazy,
foulmouthed Catullus!
Weeps in Asia by a
brother's grave.
Sails for home,
betrayed to mated griefs—
Clodia, his Clodia―
witty, sexy, adored by all― gone!
Her cool-pillared
villa empty, fountains still on.
As I sat on the
Capitol, her own true man rushed by,
tailed his soiled
girl down all the mucky slums,
enraged in love with
his cock-mad jilt...
Trust degraded by
essential hurt.
Not that a
fair-minded history gets it right,
however decently
exorbitant for truth...
Secure and anxious
in this nice modern house,
I need an index of
those special words, and words on words,
in clear daylight or
obscure―
nameless, as certain
shades of colours are.
"I Love You
— Goodbye!"
In Kilburn I walked
down the street.
What you did! What
you said!
Thumb-tack through a
billet-doux —
that note on your
door made an end!
And more than that —
no more amor.
Too much wish made
too much whim,
my theory of love's
mistake. So:
at last you upped
and went.
Again I see my
smiling snap
you'd hidden on the
sly.
Jumping Jack, I’d
hopped all your hints,
till: "I love you —
goodbye!”
© Copyright, 2012,
Gerald Solomon. |