From the Psongs Of Harry…

PSONG 59

Father,
2 I have broken you, ignored you, killed you,
3 But you do not fade away; you turn toward me in my dreams as you never did in fact,
4 And I am not shocked or shamed,
5 But matter of fact;
6 We are the same cup, drunk by different faces.
7 Some are poisoned, some are fed,
8 Some are, of course, indifferent or indignant.
9 I have looked into your cup, you into mine;
10 My liquor is older than yours, and younger.
11 What I see in its liquid skin is the world of me,
12 Me a transparent tattoo on its slippery flesh,
13 All evaporating, waiting to be consumed,
14 Pregnant intoxicant mirage.
15 But when I ask you to look,
16 You see you, the shimmering skin of a world ago,
17 And there I am only an unreflected memory of mine.
18 Why, then, do you smile in my dreams?
19 Is that my memory again, my wish, my punishment?
20 Or is it the blending, at last, of the dregs of our final draught?

PSONG 60

I could give up sleeping,
2 But for the alarm of morning,
3 Which wants to surprise us awake,
4 With a brand new ancient lesson.
5 Every morning is everywhere,
6 The center of being undraped and unafraid,
7 On display for its satellites.
8 When I was in Rio, I flung open the broad smiling horizon built upon my balcony,
9 And I squinted the darkness away.
10 Today I roll out under the roof of morning,
11 Trusting a sun I can’t see,
12 Imagining the boastful light above the trusses and timbers and shingles of our conceits,
13 But I do not dare to look at the blush of retreating night,
14 That pink behind we all must show,
15 In impotent flight.
16 Darkness always loses courage in the end,
17 And dawn wins every day.
18 So must I,
19 But more slowly now than then,
20 When I was young.