EMILY DICKINSON HAD THE WORST TASTE IN MEN
by Katha Pollitt
Page 10
This next poem is called "A Walk." Maybe not the best title I've ever thought of, but I couldn't do any better. And this sort of takes off from the Chinese poets who were so wonderful because they complained so much. I like that.
When I go for a walk
and see they're tearing down
some old red plush Rialto
for an office building,
and suddenly realize,
this was where Mama and I saw "Lovers of Terruelle"
three times in a single sitting,
and the drugstore where we went afterwards for ice creams, gone, too,
and Mama's gone,
and my ten-year-old self.
I admire more than ever,
the ancient Chinese poets,
who were comforted in exile
by thoughts of the transience of life,
how, yesterday, for instance,
quince bloomed in the emperor's courtyard,
but today wild geese fly south over ruined towers,
or, O full moon,
that shone on our scholarly wine parties,
do you see us now,
scattered on distant shores?
A melancholy restraint
is surely the proper approach to take in this world.
And so I walk on, recalling Soon Chee-Chee,
who, when old and full of sadness, wrote merely,
"A cool day,
a fine fall."
