Renaissance Man in a Secular Place

    by Susan Stevens



Going home is like visiting a shrine of your own juvenilia:
What is it that keeps things transfixed,
like a stop-action camera or a runner become bronze?
You know the leaves are new, and the wind and sunbreak ancient.

What is it that keeps things transfixed?
For the man at the bar the judgment is foregone . . .
You know the leaves are new and the wind and sunbreak ancient,
but he curses the cold—it's "painful."

For the man at the bar, the judgment is foregone.
No longer the affable gent of your seminar,
he curses the cold.  It's painful
watching scotch work its waywardness on him.

No longer the affable gent who seeks
a difference of opinion—now there's a critical air.
Watching the scotch work its waywardness on him,
you wish he'd go home.  He has the kindest eyes . . .

Difference of opinion, essential to air, is
his classroom stock-in-trade, all-electric dialogue.
You wish he'd go home.  He had the kindest eyes,
telling you his need to see those he loves in discovery.

His classroom stock-in-trade: all-electric dialogue,
a requirement for him that hurts in its urgency.
Telling you his need to see those he loves in discovery,
he speaks of the wife he loved, discovering—someone else.

The requirement for him that hurts is transfixed,
like a stop-action camera, or a runner become bronze;
difference, scotch-skewed, estranges now.  He won't go home:
Going home is like visiting a shrine of your own juvenilia.