The Old Man; and Others
The Old Man
He was talking – yes talking – to of all things, a chair
And all the people in the room – well – they couldn’t help but stare
His gaze had never left it – from the time he’d first sat down
‘Cause in his mind he heard a voice – no other sounds could drown
He’d smile a bit, and nod his head – Sometimes, raise his glass
Even to the vacant chair – the salt and pepper pass.
Someone near cried, ‘Waiter! Here! – You see that crazy guy
Who sits and stares – with no one there – can you tell me why?’
‘As long as I recall, Sir – that’s the way it’s been.
Every night he sits right there – and talks to one, unseen’.
Just then the old man limped around – as best as he was able
To gently draw the empty chair – away from ‘neath the table
The waiter called, ‘Goodnight Sir – We’ll see you both tomorrow’.
He made the words seem bright enough but they were tinged with sorrow.
Outside, the old man crooked his arm – and said, ‘Come dear, take hold’.
And with a smile upon his face – stepped out into the cold.
Keith Crocker
Surely God Was A Lover
Surely God was a lover when He bade the day begin
Soft as a woman’s eyelid – white as a woman’s skin.
Surely God was a lover, with a lover’s faults and fears,
When He made the sea as bitter as a willful woman’s tears
Surely God was a lover, with the madness love will bring:
He wrought while His love was singing, and put her soul in the spring.
Surely God was a lover, by a woman’s wile controlled,
When He made the summer a woman thirsty and unconsoled.
Surely God was a lover when He made the trees so fair;
In every leaf is a glory caught from a woman’s hair.
Surely God was a lover-see, in the flowers He grows,
His love’s eyes in the violet-her sweetness in the rose.
Shaw Neilson
He Never Touched The Earth
The poor lad started on his walk,
It scarcely was a mile.
Not far away he knew his love
Was ready with a smile.
Had God been looking out the sky
He would have shook with mirth,
For the poor lad was in a dream-
He never touched the earth.
He said “It is a sea of air,
And all the clouds will swim.’
The poor lad, he half forgot
The earth was under him.
The Listeners
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said,
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Learned over and looked into the grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in the air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Travellers call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Walter De La Mare
I love this poem for its lovely word patterns, and it describes perfectly how when you come upon an empty house the feeling you get that there are still inhabitants watching you, silently, and waiting for you to be gone.