Since you asked, let's make it dinner
at your house—a celebration
for no reason, which is always
the best occasion. Are you worried
there won't be enough space, enough food?
But in a poem we can do anything we want.
Look how easy it is to add on rooms, to multiply
the wine and chickens. And while we're at it
let's take those trees that died last winter
and bring them back to life.
Things should look pulled together,
and we could use the shade—so even now
they shudder and unfold their bright new leaves.
And now the guests are arriving—everyone
you expected, then others as well:
Friends who never became your friends,
the women you didn't marry, all their children.
And the dead—I didn't tell you
but they're always included in these gatherings
hesitant and shy, they hang back at first
among the blossoming trees.
You have only to say their names,
ask them inside. Everyone will find a place
at your table. What more can I do?
The glasses are filled, the children are quiet.
My friend, it must be time for you to speak.
by Lawrence Raab from his book What We Don’t Know About Each Other, published by Penguin in 1993. A new collection of his poems, entitled The History of Forgetting, is due out from Penguin in June 2009.
