'Poetry always remembers'

 

“There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.” – Edward Hirsch

 

Born in Chicago in January of 1950, Hirsch is a multiple-award winning poet described as “elegant in both his writing and reading of poetry."  Among his many honors are a National Book Critics Circle Award; Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts grants; and a MacArthur “Genius” award.  The author of 10 books of poetry and 9 nonfiction books, he also has edited at least a dozen other volumes.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Hirsch’s,

 

                                   Early Sunday Morning

                               I used to mock my father and his chums

                               for getting up early on Sunday morning
                               and drinking coffee at a local spot
                               but now I’m one of those chumps.

                              No one cares about my old humiliations
                              but they go on dragging through my sleep
                              like a string of empty tin cans rattling
                              behind an abandoned car.

                             It’s like this: just when you think
                             you have forgotten that red-haired girl
                             who left you stranded in a parking lot
                             forty years ago, you wake up

                             early enough to see her disappearing
                             around the corner of your dream
                             on someone else’s motorcycle
                             roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

                            And so now I’m sitting in a dimly lit
                            café full of early morning risers
                            where the windows are covered with soot
                            and the coffee is warm and bitter.