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 

• The Methodist by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Death of Nicou by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Copernican System by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Advice by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Song from Aella by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Sly Dick by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Narva and Mored by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Heccar and Gaira by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• February by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Eclogues by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• Colin Instructed by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• An Excelente Balade of Charitie: As Wroten bie the Gode Pri by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• A New Song by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• A Hymn for Christmas Day by Thomas Chatterton by Thomas Chatterton
• The Spring by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• The Primrose by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song. Murdering Beauty by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song. Mediocrity in love rejected. by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song. Good Counsel to a Young Maid by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew
• Song: Eternity of Love Protested by Thomas Carew by Thomas Carew

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