Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern [Poetry Foundation]

from Gerald Stern’s American Sonnets:

Alone

by Gerald Stern

I was alone and I could do what I wanted —

I couldn’t believe my luck — if I wanted to sleep

at ten in the morning I could sleep or two

in the afternoon, if that was my time, or wander

by car or foot delicately in the night

when everything was resting exhausted and stop to

eat in quiet, no humor at last, oh coffee,

coffee, I was sitting alone at a counter —

I was in a painting sort of — closeness

closer than love between me and the waitress,

and when I paid the bill more closeness, I walked

from window to window, once I walked the length

of Amsterdam Avenue, once I walked from Lake

Garda to Venice, a hundred miles, and Venice

south to Florence, through Bologna; I ate

mortadella cheap I washed in the fountains

I slept with the barking dogs and twice in my life

I woke up surrounded, once on the floor of a train station,

once on the floor of a bank. I left at five

or six in the morning; I put my keys in a bottle;

I wore two pair of socks and hid my money.

Grass and Water

The geese have their heaven and I have mine,

though both are made of grass and water and both

have sudden subtle bridges where the carved stone

changes color under the presumptive arches,

and it is microcosmic and symbolic

so I could be there lying under the stars,

if it is one of the hazy afternoons,

and even mistake the birdlime for the Milky Way

or one drop of water in the sunlight

for one of the late afternoons, though nothing I know

will save them even though their eggs are like steel,

even though their guards are wise; whereas I

still am struggling, I with the soft egg, I

with the infantile presidents. You should see me

explaining things to them, below the bridge

this side of the river, not for one good second

ridiculing them. I still am reading and thinking;

I still am comparing; and I am spending my time

like one or two others in understanding, that is

a type of heaven too, at least for me it is,

holding on to the stabbed uprooted sycamore.