Beverly Hills, Chicago
(“and the people live till they have white hair”)
—E. M. Price
The dry brown coughing beneath their feet,
(Only a while, for the handyman is on his way)
These people walk their golden gardens.
We say ourselves fortunate to be driving by today.
That we may look at them, in their gardens where
The summer ripeness rots. But not raggedly.
Even the leaves fall down in lovelier patterns here.
And the refuse, the refuse is a neat brilliancy.
When they flow sweetly into their houses
With softness and slowness touched by that everlasting
gold,
We know what they go to. To tea. But that does not mean
They will throw some little black dots into some water and
add sugar and the juice of the cheapest lemons that
are sold,
While downstairs that woman’s vague phonograph bleats,
“Knock me a kiss.”
And the living all to be made again in the sweatingest
physical manner
Tomorrow .... Not that anybody is saying that these people
have no trouble.
Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful
banner.
Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease
to be. And
Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours.
It is just that so often they live till their hair is white.
They make excellent corpses, among the expensive
flowers ....
Nobody is furious. Nobody hates these people.
At least, nobody driving by in this car.
It is only natural, however, that it should occur to us
How much more fortunate they are than we are.
It is only natural that we should look and look
At their wood and brick and stone
And think, while a breath of pine blows,
How different these are from our own.
We do not want them to have less.
But it is only natural that we should think we have not
enough.
We drive on, we drive on.
When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff.
Notes:
The portfolio this poem is part of is comprised of selections from a new seventy-fifth anniversary edition of Annie Allen (Brooks Permissions, 2024), and published here by permission of Nora Brooks Blakely. You can read the rest of the portfolio in the September 2024 issue.
Source: Poetry (September 2024)