Your voice comes to me, George, on the winter night In the faint mazy stars, a murmur of hesitant light In the air frozen solid, it seems, from here to Maine. Lonely and late I made pancakes, awful pancakes, And ate them with watery syrup and grease and with Love of myself when young, with cognac in a glass, And with cigarettes, the smoke coiling reflected In the black window. What are you saying, George? I strain to hear. Are you as smart and percipient As you were, can you tell me what I almost know In your words not mine as you used to, words So French and accurate I thought Descartes And Camus must live in you as well as Tolstoy And Kropotkin, words of fierce loyalties and loves For beautiful ideas and men and women? Tell me, George, for Michael your boy's sake, where are you, When will we see you, have your bones become dust, Is your voice dust in your throat? Oh, let the thin Dawn come now with its fishblood on the horizon, Its icy fog. You are the lovingest memory in this Rattling brain that shakes off its synapses like an old Dog climbing out of a cold brook. George, George, What in God's name must I do to get you back? Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A CORONAL by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS THE PASSIONS: AN ODE FOR MUSIC by WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) PARTED by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR WHEN THE KYE CAME HOME by JAMES HOGG PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 3 by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAY by WILLIAM AUGUSTUS MUHLENBERG SHUT OUT by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI GOD'S DETERMINATIONS: THE JOY OF CHURCH FELLOWSHIP RIGHTLY ATTENDED by EDWARD TAYLOR |