Two Poems by Jonathan Galassi

photo by elisabelle

YOUNG

I tired, and each attempt was a fiasco.

I yearned, but every love of mine was wrong.

I needed, and the shame was overwhelming.

I failed, and so I hated being young.

MIDDLE-AGED

He was middle-aged which

means that the mixture of

death and life in him was

still undetermined. And

all of a sudden he took

an unwarranted turn - impul-

sive, convulsive. As in

those nineteenth-century

plays where the roof gets

blown off the convention-

al house and the audience

is left to gape at the 

heroine bareheaded - him.

He has a gift for self-

serious hyperbole and he

resorts to it regularly

to describe and explain

his behavior. Not that

anything happened. But

he stared into something,

an abyss or a garden, and

now in the aftermath he's

more alone than before.

He has not been forgiven,

not that he wants to be.

What he wants is to know

what he saw, that it wasn't 

theatrics. But that's

hard to achieve, things

being what they are, the

others implicated being

themselves. So he walks 

in circles and wonders

and kicks at the leaves.

-from The Pairs Review #199 

+ 나는 오늘 화장실에서 혼잣말하고 있는 여자를 보았다.

+ 나는 오늘 음식에 까다롭고 환경보호에 민감하고 매사에 깔끔하기로 정평이 나있는 어떤 사람이 손을 씻지 않고 화장실에서 나가는 것을 알아챘다.

+ 나는 오늘 까페에서 아주머니 세 분이 하시는 얘기를 엿들었다. 키워드는 영어 교육, 영어 발음, 제 2외국어, 조기 유학, 청담/ 대치, 유명 학원, 대원 외고, 내신 점수이다.

+ 나는 너가 지금 가지고 있는 그 책들에 대해 그 새 생각이 좀 바뀌었는데 말야. 미처 얘기할 기회가 없었네. 그것들은 아무래도 너무 건조해 안되겠어.

+ 나는 내일 아빠의 체면 같은 것을 생각해서 할 일이 있는데 즐거운 실험 정신으로 해보겠다.