Saturday, May 4, 2019

Close the Book by Robert Lowell


Close the Book
 
The book is finished and the air is lighter,
I can recognize people in the room;
I touch your pictures, find you in the round.
The cat sits pointing the window from the bedspread,
hooked on the nightlife flashing through the curtain;
he is a dove and thinks the lights are pigeons—
flames from the open hearth of Thor and Saul,
arms frescoed on the vaults of the creeping cavern,
missiles no dialectician’s hand will turn,
fleshpots for the slung chunks of awk and man.
Children have called the anthropoid, father;
He’d stay home Sunday, and they walked on eggs . . .
The passage from lower to upper middle age
is quicker than the sigh of a match in the water—
we too were students, and betrayed our hand.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.