Study of Time
One bird deserves another. One white and orange tabletop.
One twenty-five-year-old deserves another
Twenty-five-year-old. One harlequin deserves another harlequin. One rich cocktail of flames
deserves another
And one extravagant boast: I am the Obvious. My hunch is me.
One brain deserves a brain that has been hatched in the tropics
One broken heart a heart that has been differently broken.
It seems to me time to get something done. But if I get in the car
I am forty-five years old and you are nineteen. We are
Not going anywhere. The car won't start. And if I get out
I am sixty years old. I look around but don't see you there.
I expect it's a good presumption that you care coming back,
But hurry. If I go into the drugstore
I am thirty-three. The boy behind the counter
Is not a girl, but we discuss national politics anyway.
That fucking Nixon. Or That damned unholy war! If I read a magazine
At the stand, on the other side of the drugstore,
I am twenty-five, and you, dressed with some hoop-la, come in.
I am sixteen when I am lying on the floor, with you beside me
Reading a newspaper. One stone man
Deserves one stone women, and one glad day of being alone
And in good health. If at seventy
I get up and close the door,
I am fourteen and you are twenty. I'll put on
My blue shirt. My white tie, I'm twenty, twenty-one. Now we are eighty.
One five o'clock sunny day
Deserves another. We are both fifty-four. You pick up the bar that holds the door
And hit it as hard as you can at twenty. The floor deserves the floor
Of heaven that is a ceiling as we see it. One coldly affected group
Deserves another. We both very much enjoy engaging in sports.
You fall down, I pick you up. I am eight
You are sixty-six. Today is your birthday. You stand opening a cantaloupe. You say, Let's
Try another! You are sitting in the car,
You are twenty-three, I am forty-four and singing a Spanish song.
If she is nine years old, then I am fifty.
The birthdays come and go talking of Prospero. Good-bye, house!
Do you remember when we used to live in you
And be forty-eight years old? One age deserves another. One time deserves another time.
- Kenneth Koch