POEM
The Orient
He had sustained his share of treacheries
so that it came as no surprise when his
nerve went slack or the wife ignored him, when
his six-year-old brought home a surly note
about his listening skills or self-control.
For these he had outlined a stratagem.
First off he’d drink himself horizontal
against his sleeplessness and to induce
that dream he always dreamt in black and white
in which he was the calm and steely kind
who rode in a rickshaw full of counsel
and after whom the mission teachers ran
ripe in their kimonos and sweet breath as
mandarins in a wet month, for his songs.
Careful in closing always to arrange
the usual sunset into which he strode
off in the direction, he’d begin to hope,
of a place with clean toilets and a view.
Thomas Lynch, “The Orient” from Skating With Heather Grace. Copyright © 1986 by Thomas Lynch. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Source: Skating with Heather Grace (1986)
Essayist, poet, and funeral director Thomas Lynch has written three critically acclaimed volumes of . . . MORE »
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