|
|
Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AS TO BEING ALONE, by JAMES OPPENHEIM Poet's Biography First Line: Why did you hate to be by yourself Last Line: Have the life-surging heavens no business but this? Subject(s): Solitude; Loneliness | |||
WHY did you hate to be by yourself, And why were you sick of your own company? Such the question, and this the answer: I feared sublimity: I was a little afraid of God: Silence and space terrified me, bringing the thought of what an irritable clod I was and how soon death would gulp me down ... This fear has reared cities: The cowards flock together by the millions lest they should be left alone for a half hour ... With church, theater and school, With office, mill and motor, With a thousand cunning devices, and clever calls to each other, They escape from themselves to the crowd ... Oh, I have loved it all: Snug rooms, the talk, the pleasant feast, the pictures: The warm bath of humanity in which I relaxed and soaked myself: And never, I hope, shall I be without it -- at times ... But now myself calls me ... The skies demand me, though it is but ten in the morning: The earth has an appointment with me, not to be broken ... I must accustom myself to the gaunt face of the Subtime ... I must see what I really am, and what I am for, And what this city is for, and the Earth and the stars in their hurry ... To turn out typewriters, To invent a new breakfast food, To devise a dance that was never danced until now, To urge a new sanitation, and a swifter automobile -- Have the life-surging heavens no business but this? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN ABEYANCE by DENISE LEVERTOV IN A VACANT HOUSE by PHILIP LEVINE SUNDAY ALONE IN A FIFTH FLOOR APARTMENT, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS by WILLIAM MATTHEWS SILENCE LIKE COOL SAND by PAT MORA THE HONEY BEAR by EILEEN MYLES |
| |