Old Boy poem – A. Van Jordan poems

If one rainy night you find yourself
leaving a phone booth, and you meet a man
with a lavender umbrella, resist
your desire to follow him, to seek
shelter from the night in his solace.
Later, don’t fall victim to the Hypnotist’s
narcotic of clarity, which proves
a curare for the heart; her salve
is merely a bandage, under which memories
pulse. Resist the taste for something still
alive for your first meal; resist the craving
for the touch of a hand from your past.
We live some memories,
and some memories are planted. There’s
only so much space for the truth
and the fabrications to spread out
in one’s mind. When there’s no more
space, we grow desperate. You’ll ask
if practicing love for years in your mind,
prepares you for the moment,
if practicing to defend one’s life
is the same as living? You’ll
hole up, captive, in a hotel room
for fifteen years and learn to find
a man within you, which will prove
a painful introduction to the trance
into which you were born. Better
to stay under the spell of your guilt,
than to forget; you’ve already released
your pain onto the world; don’t believe
there’s some joy in forgetting.
There’s no joy in the struggle to forget.
And what appears as an endless verdant field,
only spreads across a building’s rooftop;
your peaceful sleep could be a fetal position,
which secures you in a suitcase in this field.
A bell rings, and you fall out of this luggage
like clothes you no longer fit. Now what to do?
You remember when you were the man
who fit those clothes, but you’ve forgotten this
world. Even forgotten scenes from your life,
leave shadows of the memory,
haunting your spirit
until, within a moment’s glance,
strangers passing you on the street,
observe history in your eyes. Experience
lingers through acts of forgetting,
small acts of love or trauma
falling from the same place. Whether
memory comes in the form of a stone
or a grain of sand, they both sink in water.
A tongue—even if it were, say, sworn
to secrecy; or if it were cut from one’s mouth;
yes, even without a mouth to envelop
its truth—the tongue continues to confess.

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Poems in English 

• Welcome A.O.H. Men by Michael McGovern by Poetry In English
• Weekend Glory by Maya Angelou by Poetry In English
• Twilight Acts of Decadence. by Michael Levy by Poetry In English
• Travel to Infinite Places by Michael Levy by Poetry In English
• To A Cricket by Michael McGovern by Poetry In English
• The Woods At Night by May Swenson by Poetry In English
• The Waradgery Tribe by Mary Gilmore by Poetry In English
• The Rock Cries Out to Us Today by Maya Angelou by Poetry In English
• The Passing of Stumpy Shore by Mervyn John Webster by Poetry In English
• The Mothering Blackness by Maya Angelou by Poetry In English
• The Meaning of Music by Mercedes Madrigal by Poetry In English
• The Lesson by Maya Angelou by Poetry In English
• The January Birds by Maurice Riordan by Poetry In English
• The Hermit Goes Up Attic by Maxine Kumin by Poetry In English
• The Gravy Train by Michael Levy by Poetry In English
• The Fishermen, The Gulls & The Bible People by Michael Estabrook by Poetry In English
• The First Thrush by Mary Gilmore by Poetry In English
• The Fairies Break Their Dances by A. E. Housman by Poetry In English
• The Burning Crusade by Memphis Knight by Poetry In English
• The Rolling Mills by Michael McGovern by Poetry In English

More external links (open in a new tab):

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Search engines:

Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)

Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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