Two Thousand and Eight

In which Mitzie became a mother.

Weeps out of western country something new.
Blurred and stupendous. Wanted and unplanned.
Winks. Twines, and weakly winks
Upon the milk-glass fruit bowl, iron pot,
The bashful china child tipping forever
Yellow apron and spilling pretty cherries.

- Gwendolyn Brooks, from “the birth in a narrow room”

In which I lived in cafes.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

- Wallace Stevens, from “Sunday Morning

In which we lost our senses, not just in Subic.

As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four,
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.

- Henry Reed, from “Chard Whitlow”

In which my friends and I fought against, for, with and without each other.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags,
we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

- Wilfred Owen, from “Dulce Et Decorum Est”

In which I acted like I was the Time magazine cover.

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields;
on – on – and out of sight.

- Siegfried Sassoon, From “Everyone Sang”

In which I read more Grantas than books.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat –
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

- Kenneth Koch, from “Permanently”

In which I never knew where I’d spend Sundays, but I was sure it’d be alcoholically.

“I won’t go with you. I want to stay with Grandpa!”
That’s how I threw cold water
on my Mother and Father’s
watery martini pipe dreams at Sunday dinner.

- Robert Lowell, from “My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow”

In which I tried to have two cakes and eat them, too.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre,
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy
Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learing who you are,
Learning what I am.

- James Fenton, From “In Paris with You”

...and in which I celebrated my twenty-fourth birthday with some sort of nougat ice cream, compliments of a Thai seafood restaurant called Crustacea.

I appreciate the studious labour
Of your redness, the scholarly fragrance
Of your sex. To mirror tidal drifts
The light ripples across or to enhance darkness
With palpable tinctures, dense as salt.

- Eric Ormsby, from “Starfish”