There he was, Claude Rains, with Margot,
I thought I’d seen that scene before And come to the end of the movie, You know the one, where she’s heartsore, And he is suave and lies gives up lies, Then lies again. It is summer time And here is Hunter Mountain and Its stones, and the same hot climb. Imagine driving all the way To Tennessee, and when you get there, You find yourself back in Chicago. Your shoes Have been placed, toe-in, in the Frigidaire. That’s all right, it wasn’t for nothing, We met the Three Furies, we got to know them, And out there where the field is darkest Are two trumpets. We’re supposed to blow them, It’s the only way to cord your muscles In your old age, that and bending Over a crinkled page of Talmud (Or of Borges?), and comprehending That the Kumrat Valley is not the pass Before the ultimate mountain, there’s no Ultimate mountain. And when we’re tired, We tumble back to the cold and the snow And trees that died before they bore fruit, Burnt black, and a stone hut With the same dirty floor, a hearth but no heat, No way to get the old door shut, Because we didn’t come for the shale Or the sky or the mountain, we came to go, A topography that is not still, A covered bridge and blazing snow.
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Yaacov David Shulman
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