In a rush to class this evening, late train finally arrives; its too crowded, and I absolutely am not one to push on like some barnacle. I wait for the second train. Crowded, but there are two seats. I sit, and open my volume of Emily Dickinsons poems, reading over the poem I will try to explicate in class. I am immersed, but after a while, feel someones eyes on me across from me -- that second sight, that peripheral horizon just out of sight --- but I dont look up. I begin marking certain passages and lines in the poems. At some point, I stop and do look up. I catch the glance of a dark-haired man in a blueberry sweater, slightly smiling; his gaze dead on me. He leans forward, and asks Do you know if Robert Frost attended Harvard? After a pause (I was not expecting such a question), I answer I should know that, but I dont. (Frost did go to Harvard, and he was a dropout). The mans companion, a woman, looked at me also, with a strange eye. Is this something she endured from time to time --- her husbands (brothers, boyfriends, cousins) inquiries to strangers? The man, quite handsome, looked at me directly and then asked, Do you know any Irish poets? I was caught off guard, (and thankfully didnt say Dylan Thomas, but he was on the tip of my tongue. Good Lord, how did I not say Gerard Manley Hopkins!) I shook my head. I leaned closer across the aisle, my book open to where Id left the last page; his eyes directly on me, the man began to recite in the most beautiful voice, a poem. His lilt and brogue were dense with the words, and I was kind of mesmerized. When he ended the poem -- which in my stupor I could glean was about some lost beauty, some landscape of memory -- I and he simply looked at each other. Then he said, I love that people read poetry. I told him that he recited beautifully. He said I should read the Irish poets (believe me, I will). His wife (girlfriend, sister, cousin, friend) got up as the train was about to pull into the station. (I dont know how many stations had gone by). He got up, and smiled and I thanked him for his poem. He smiled and headed for the door. But then he turned quickly back to me, and reached out his hand to shake mine (I thought), and instead raised it to his nose, and said, And there is another---- but was abruptly cut off by his companions loud soprano, DECLAN! Quick now, the doors are closing! She had no idea what doors had opened.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 01:55:53 +0000
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