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A Momentary Longing To Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead

By Kenneth Koch 1925–2002 Kenneth Koch

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat

Saying to me as we walked across the Yard

Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said

You are not wearing overcoat. He said,

You should do as I say not do as I do.

Just how American it was and how late Forties it was

Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me

In his New York apartment sitting on chair

Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering.

Look at this photograph said of his mother and father.

Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out.

Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture.

Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said.

Why don't you ask him?

Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not.

Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph.

Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs.

Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening

I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true.

Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying

But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.

Source: Poetry (October 2002).

Biography

Prize-winning author Kenneth Koch published numerous collections of poetry, avant-garde plays, and short fiction while also serving as one of the nation's best-known creative writing teachers during a career that spanned over five decades. Associated with the New York School of poetry for most of his career, Koch used surrealism, satire, irony, and an element of surprise in many of his poems. However, "his satires are more than . . .

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