Poem

By Thomas McGrath 1916–1990 Thomas McGrath

I don’t belong in this century—who does?

In my time, summer came someplace in June—

The cutbanks blazing with roses, the birds brazen, and the astonished

Pastures frisking with young calves . . .

That was in the country—

I don’t mean another country, I mean in the country:

And the country is lost. I don’t mean just lost to me,

Nor in the way of metaphorical loss—it’s lost that way too—

No; nor in no sort of special case: I mean

Lost.

Now, down below, in the fire and stench, the city

Is building its shell: elaborate levels of emptiness

Like some sea-animal building toward its extinction.

And the citizens, unserious and full of virtue,

Are hunting for bread, or money, or a prayer,

And I behold them, and this season of man, without love.

If it were not a joke, it would be proper to laugh.

—Curious how that rat’s nest holds together—

Distracting . . .

Without it there might be, still,

The gold wheel and the silver, the sun and the moon,

The season’s ancient assurance under the unstable stars

Our fiery companions . . .

And trees, perhaps, and the sound

Of the wild and living water hurrying out of the hills.

Without these, I have you for my talisman:

Sun, moon, the four seasons,

The true voice of the mountains. Now be

(The city revolving in its empty shell,

The night moving in from the East)

—Be thou these things.

Thomas McGrath, “Poem [I don’t belong in this century—who does?]” from The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems, published by Swallow Press/Ohio University Press. Copyright © 1972 by Thomas McGrath. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.

Source: The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems (Swallow Press, 1972)

Biography

For some fifty years, the late Thomas McGrath produced a prolific array of titles, encompassing poetry, novels, books for children, and several documentary film scripts, including uncredited work on the eloquent and exhilarating Smithsonian film about the history of flight, To Fly. But McGrath is primarily a poet, and although "important contemporary poets . . . proclaim him as a major voice in American poetry in the last three . . .

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