There were other summers when I could beam energy back at the sky. No thought of naps then, when having soaked up a long day's rays I'd be ready to carry on all night. Heat brought energy. Now heat drains energy away. Summer was once all nouns and verbs, and now it's like strings of adverbs and prepositions. I've lost the language of heat. How I'd like to have it back.
Sunday Verse
Still Burning
by Gerald Stern
Me trying to understand say whence
say whither, say what, say me with a pencil walking,
say reading the dictionary, say learning medieval
Latin, reading Spengler, reading Whitehead,
William James I loved him, swimming breaststroke
and thinking for an hour, how did I get here?
Or thinking in line, say the 69 streetcar
or 68 or 67 Swissvale,
that would take me elsewhere, me with a textbook
reading the pre-Socratics, so badly written,
whoever the author was, me on the floor of
the lighted stacks sitting cross-legged,
walking afterwards through the park or sometimes
running across the bridges and up the hills,
sitting down in our tiny diningroom,
burning in a certain way, still burning.