From This Side

I'll be in my twenties for another three weeks or so and from this side of things I can't wait to be rid of the burden of youth. Sure, middle-aged people laugh and say, "Oh, you young people always think you're so old." But thirty is pretty much the cut off point: any illusions you might have about being just a kid get increasingly hard to justify. And kids, well - they know you stop being a kid when you have to insist you still are one.

I know little about this poet, and for the moment I like it that way. I tend to get turned off by orthographic sleight-of-hand: unusual punctuation or capitalization. I figure the magician who can do his confident act without top hat or beautiful assistant is the real performer. But I like the cut of this guy's jib, and an interesting jib it is.

Happy Birthday

Frank Bidart

Thirty-three, goodbye -
the awe I feel


is not that you won't come again, or why -


or even that after
a time, we think of those who are dead


with a sweetness that cannot be explained -


but that I've read the trading-cards:
RALPH TEMPLE CYCLIST CHAMPION TRICK RIDER


WILLIE HARRADON CYCLIST
THE YOUTHFUL PHENOMENON


F.F. IVES CYCLIST
100 MILES 6 H. 25 MIN. 30 SEC.


- as the fragile metal of their
wheels stopped turning, as they


took on wives, children, accomplishments, all those
predilections which also insisted on ending,


they could not tell themselves from what they had done.


Terrible to dress in the clothes
of a period that must end.


They didn't plan it that way -
they didn't plan it that way.