Fugue
You see them vanish in their speeding cars,
The many people hastening through the world,
And wonder what they would have done
This time of time speed distance, random
Of molecules hastened by what rising heat?
Was there never a world where people just sat still?
Yet they might be all of them
Of a timeless now, drivers and
In the moving cars all facing to the
Which is the future, which is destiny,
Which is desire and desire's end - What are they doing but just sitting still?
And still at speed they fly away, as still As the road paid out beneath them as it
Moment by moment into the mirrored past;
They spread in their wake the parading fields of food,
The windowless works where who is making what,
The grey towns where the wishes and the fears are done.
Howard Nemerov was born on February 29th, 1920 in New York.
He died of cancer at his home in University City,
Missouri on July 5th 1991.
Howard Nemerov
Other author posts
To D— Dead By Her Own Hand
My dear, I wonder if before the end You ever thought about a children’s game— I’m sure you must have played it too—in which You ran along a narrow garden wall Pretending it to be a mountain ledge So steep a snowy darkness fell away On either ...
Walking the Dog
Two universes mosey down the Connected by love and a leash and nothing else Mostly I look at lamplight through the While he mooches along with tail up and snout down,
The Dependencies
This morning, between two branches of a Beside the door, epeira once Has spun and signed his tapestry and trap I test his early-warning system
September The First Day Of School
My child and I hold hands on the way to school, And when I leave him at the first-grade He cries a little but is brave; he Let go