6.
What happens next takes
Seconds, it takes a thousand years.
A dog barks once,
A cricket chirps, the children
Lift their heads to breathe in fields, a flag
Snapping in the wind, the sun
A daub of Tintoretto’s
Crimson sliding into the Great Salt Pond—let’s
Count together,
Kathryn, Alice, Marc,
Jillian, Owen, Adam, everybody,
Five, four, three, two—
7.
Song of the Sun
No matter where
You are no
Matter where I
Go if you are
Speaking
To me I have
Said this
Before I say
It now I will be
Listening
To you
Speak
THIS LITTLE ISLAND
1.
Outside the room where you have lived a long time
Are other rooms, another building, just like yours.
Each night a ship sails past, wider than the building, taller than the highest church.
And though the passengers come to visit the city,
No one in the city ever boards the ship. Would you?
Each night this spectacle is seen by you.
The street surveyed,
The air inhaled.
Grapes from the west,
Cinnamon from the east—
If I’ve employed too liberally the passive voice,
Remember it’s the thoughts, the feelings
That matter here,
Not the one who feels them.
2.
Shall we walk to the market?
You could walk there blind, like Gloucester, smelling your way.
Shall we stop for coffee? Which café?
The one that’s commandeered by women, delicate cups?
Or the one where men preside, baristas in tuxedos, the coffee rich enough for rainy days?
A window, the desk, a lamp and a chair—
You’ve liked the room, you like to rearrange it for winter,
Put things back for spring.
But you’ve been young for a long time,
An embarrassingly long time.
Remember how much, despite
Your ridiculous behavior, you’ve been loved.
3.
The city never changes, it’s never the same.
Sometimes the inhabitants restore a building, patch it up,
But in a generation they’re dissatisfied, they try again,
Expose the old parts so you see them
Plainly, ruined or not.
Who schooled you?
What made you scared of change?
Vividly you remember a child’s body; likewise you remember a man’s.
You woke up one morning,
There you were, a stinking adult.
What happened between? What will it be like,
You’ve seen the images, to watch your body spoiling
From the inside out, your lungs, your neck,
The muscles in your face—
Look out the window,
Choose a single brick.
Once, a long time ago, the city was old.
4.
Clouds desire the sky, the sky the sun. The wave
Desires the land it’s eroding,
Repeating the same question, day after day—
Am I allowed to ask for what I want?
And every day the land responds
Of course you’re allowed.
You’re allowed to be angry,
You’re allowed to curse the God who put you here.
I’ve buried many people, old people, young people.
I’ve buried children while their parents wept beside the grave.
But I’ve also seen miracles.
Remember when they told you
You might die? You didn’t, you’re alive.
And every month since then, every second is a miracle.
What happens next you cannot know.
Is it better or worse to live a long time?
Really the words better and worse do not obtain.
And when the land stops speaking
The wave flows out to sea.
5.
Close your eyes, unclench your hands.
Relax each muscle in your body, first your forehead, then your neck,
Your chest, your arms, how young you are, you’ve never
Done this before, you’ve done it a thousand times—
Outside, the walls of San Trovaso are streaked with gold.
Boats are knocking against the Giudecca.
If you stand on tiptoes you can see, above the chimney pots, its glistening rim.
Look at all the people, look at their dogs! They’re nothing like you,
And they’re here.
Who brought you here, who made the bed?
That gasp of pleasure when you entered the room,
First touched the walls,
FOREVER
Once, in a room no bigger than the bed,
I made love with a girl.
•
Have you ever made love with a girl?
Once I hadn’t, then I had.
•
A girl was looking up at me,
She was lying on the grass.
•
Once, after a terrible fight, I made love with a girl.
We were children again.
•
Once, eating ice cream,
I smelled her body on my hands.
•
The first time I made love with a girl I was scared;
I thought I would hurt her.
•
Once in Italy and on the same day,
Once in France.
•
Remember that week in the cabin?
The time in front of the fire, when everyone else was asleep?
•
Once, we made love to make a baby.
Once, a baby was sleeping on the bed.
•
I walked across the park.
A girl pulled her jeans off slowly.
•
Once, making love with a girl,
I thought I was someone else.
•
I was a boy forever.
She pushed me down on the bed.
•
What did we do afterward?
What had I done before?
•
Once, without my noticing, the world turned once,
Then twice, then disappeared.
•
Turned twice, and everything
Was different, everything was the same.
•
Nobody lives forever.
I love you. I love you, too.
•
Once, in a world no bigger than a bed,
You said we’d be lovers forever.
•
That was the first time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My gratitude to the editors of the following magazines, in which these poems originally appeared:
The Adroit Journal: “Two People”
The American Poetry Review: “In the Village”
The American Scholar: “School Street,” “Notre-Dame,” “Venice”
The New Yorker: “112th Street”
The Paris Review: “Forever”
Poem-a-Day: “Thursday”
Poetry: “Barcarolle,” “This Little Island”
Raritan: “Since February”
Seneca Review: “Song of the Sun”
The Threepenny Review: “In the Dolomites”
The Yale Review: “The Way I Like Best”
“In the Dolomites” is indebted to Sigmund
Freud’s notion of “screen memories,” to W. E. Gladstone’s Studies on Homer, and to Matthew Von Unwerth’s Freud’s Requiem, as “In the Village” is to J.-B. Pontalis’s Windows and “Venice” is to John Ruskin’s Praeterita. “In the Village” was reprinted in Poetry Daily at poems.com and also in The Best American Poetry 2021, edited by Tracy K. Smith and David Lehman.
ALSO BY JAMES LONGENBACH
POEMS
Earthling
The Iron Key
Draft of a Letter
Fleet River
Threshold
PROSE
The Lyric Now
How Poems Get Made
The Virtues of Poetry
The Art of the Poetic Line
The Resistance to Poetry
Modern Poetry After Modernism
Wallace Stevens
Stone Cottage
Copyright © 2021 by James Longenbach
All rights reserved
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Longenbach, James, author.
Title: Forever : poems / James Longenbach.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021009362 | ISBN 9780393866537 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780393866544 (epub)
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