WHERE THE FINAL WEAPON IS THE CHAIR

Ah, to be old and a mariner come upon that restful cove,

to be old, cher ami, is a gallant slouching on that chair –
where the final weapon is the chair not love,
some porch of the heart grown insensitive to care.

This must be the reverie of a changing season;

We never knew quite well how far we had travelled

before we ceased to chant our rising songs:

O we have blanched at the rustle of dried leaves

O we have quaked at the fullness of a street’s silence

O we have hushed at the coyness of echoing eves

O we have known the crag flower’s quintessence!

It is no longer Nara beyond this echo-call.

Where am I? Where are we?

If the morning never becomes an afternoon,

will it always be a waking into a moment

of disfigured song, a dawn of perpetual clocking?

(From Houses are Better Off Without Porches Here

Albert B. Casuga, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems)