On Rereading Ecclesiastes (Also see Shandean Postscripts: Click Arrow)

On Rereading Ecclesiastes
(To G)

The old books tell us
To live gently on this earth,
To love our neighbors,
And never betray our lovers
(If we are lucky enough to love).
All of these things I have not done.

And still I love and will be loved
And will live with little apology
Beneath the strict arrangement of stars,
Always expecting the mystic message
From the next lover, the next woman,
Communicated heartward to the attent corpuscles
Of nerve and mulscles;

Always expecting the next fight
To be my last, and the last fuck
To be as if my first. Should I cry
For the blessings that Fortune
Has given to me and taken away?
Should I laugh at the disasters
That happen around me but not to me?

Once after midnight, not long ago,
I wandered the city streets not knowing why ...
I found myself in the old flower district
In a place I used to spend time
With a woman I once loved.
The trucks still unload, and muscular men,
Still carry their freight of flowers, gently,
To the back counters. I was looking for her.

But I thought of you because I knew
I could write this distant memory
Of early morning blue and, perhaps, you would
Take it and remember it, and yourself,
Think of the old books that you will not follow....
And perhaps you too will live
With little apology for the hunger of the stars
You carry in your brain, the longing for life
Your tongue desires, the questions
That beat in your heart.

Jerry Monaco
New York City
(3 December 2002)
Also see Shandean Postscripts

Link