I. A Poet

We meet, we talk, we drink together in a room,

Not often enough to say out all there is to say,

Matching our heroes among poets, agreeing doom

For some, talking, smoking, going late away.

In middle age one seldom gets such good hours.

Then we were somewhat younger, we had health

Time gives when time is all ahead, all yours.

We meet, we talk, with a canny eye on our wealth.

I'm not sad. God knows I'm younger than you look

In the photograph you sent me yesterday.

But I thought just now of evenings when your book

Will lie beside my book, open, somewhere far away,

And people we can't imagine try one, the other,

And reading aloud, bring us again together.

II. A Stranger

Robert, he was the one who brought us water

Up from the cold brook when we were all sick.

He used to sing in the dark, but that was later.

His fingers on strings or knives were quiet and quick.

Didn't Robert run out and catch that crazy horse?

Robert was the one - remember - the one who said

A man ought to know words for everything he hears.

He wanted the moon and green bushes near his bed.

He listened even in the mountains for a river.

Stars he heard easily, but stones were slow,

He said sunlight moving was the loudest mover,

And once he told us he had heard grass grow,

A queer small green deep sound forever and ever.

That Robert was one we never got to know.

III. A Waiter

Nobody cried about me, said the old waiter,

Nobody cried when I left home.

I learned my trade in the old country,

I was ready to work at seventeen.

Nothing I haven't seen, he said.

Everywhere in the world, he said,

All the big boats. London. Everywhere.

I would go home, but the war,

How would I know my five brothers?

I couldn't go back if I went back,

My people are dead in the old country.

Eat more of the black bread, 's gut,

Try a little of the mustard on meat.

Nobody who comes here, he said,

For the old cheese and the cold beer,

Comes so far from home,

Hamburg. Valparaiso. San Francisco. Rome.

Everywhere in the world, he said.

There were princesses, like gold, he said.

We ran, ran, with the big platters,

And never heard our feet on the stairs.

You should see, like reading in a book.

My people are all dead in the old country.

IV. A Geologist

Far from windows and his work he climbed,

Taking me up blue rock, blue wind, and snow,

Though then I sat here warm, trimmed, timed.

He cut other names oh because he loved them,

Near mine, he said, because he believed them.

Given a symbol, my three-times-rock-cut

Name on mountain tops, I turn and turn it

In dark, light; good, ill. How could I not

Examine what honor in myself translated

Would so in stone and for so long be stated?

I am in good company, he and I know that.

Do what we may now, the names are there to be

Frozen, howled on, bouldered, God knows what.

Together. Let them stand. I told him sun on us

Is like love that warms the mountains in us.