In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued

On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso

Before it was time to start all over again.

There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils,

And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering

The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting

The whole thing might not, in the end, be the only solution.

And then there always came a time when

Happy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile

Came plowing down the course, just to make sure everything was O.K.,

Only by that time we were in another chapter and confused

About how to receive this latest piece of information.

Was it information? Weren’t we rather acting this out

For someone else’s benefit, thoughts in a mind

With room enough and to spare for our little problems (so they began to seem),

Our daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?

To reduce all this to a small variant,

To step free at last, minuscule on the gigantic plateau—

This was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.

Alas, the summer’s energy wanes quickly,

A moment and it is gone. And no longer

May we make the necessary arrangements, simple as they are.

Our star was brighter perhaps when it had water in it.

Now there is no question even of that, but only

Of holding on to the hard earth so as not to get thrown off,

With an occasional dream, a vision: a robin flies across

The upper corner of the window, you brush your hair away

And cannot quite see, or a wound will flash

Against the sweet faces of the others, something like:

This is what you wanted to hear, so why

Did you think of listening to something else? We are all talkers

It is true, but underneath the talk lies

The moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose

Meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.

These then were some hazards of the course,

Yet though we knew the course was hazards and nothing else

It was still a shock when, almost a quarter of a century later,

The clarity of the rules dawned on you for the first time.

They were the players, and we who had struggled at the game

Were merely spectators, though subject to its vicissitudes

And moving with it out of the tearful stadium, borne on shoulders, at last.

Night after night this message returns, repeated

In the flickering bulbs of the sky, raised past us, taken away from us,

Yet ours over and over until the end that is past truth,

The being of our sentences, in the climate that fostered them,

Not ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes

To be without, alone and desperate.

But the fantasy makes it ours, a kind of fence-sitting

Raised to the level of an esthetic ideal. These were moments, years,

Solid with reality, faces, namable events, kisses, heroic acts,

But like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression

Not too reassuring, as though meaning could be cast aside some day

When it had been outgrown. Better, you said, to stay cowering

Like this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning

Is a delusion, and I agreed, adding that

Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned,

That the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint

None of us ever graduates from college,

For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up

Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.

And you see, both of us were right, though nothing

Has somehow come to nothing; the avatars

Of our conforming to the rules and living

Around the home have made—well, in a sense, “good citizens” of us,

Brushing the teeth and all that, and learning to accept

The charity of the hard moments as they are doled out,

For this is action, this not being sure, this careless

Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,

Making ready to forget, and always coming back