Because it is like this,
it is not allowed to be.
It is beautiful, Tom,
but belongs to the 19th century.
You studied poetry long and passionately,
in college dorms,
among rocks and hills.
You felt in love and disappointment the same thrills
every member of the human race feels.
You gazed along earth’s mountains,
in crowded stars knew love’s face,
ripped open packages and made meals.
You marched in markets and snows.
You know what every parent already knows.
But there are associations that cannot be
in the cunning realms of poetry.
One of those is the 19th century
and its heroic, romantic quality
mixed with something we moderns reject
as too foolish, too hyperbolic, too perfect.
Napoleon and Beethoven will never come again.
The Wordsworth of rambling meters,
the Keats who was almost Christian
but knew too much was hinted
by pagan love, to be interrupted
by preachers who preach in vain
on sad sounds which sound again.
Wordsworth will not repeat, either.
Nevermore, the romance of fever
or looking for the beauty in the sad,
or Betty, childish, innocent, and glad.
You’re looking, also. That’s true.
But going back in time, Tom, is not the thing to do.
Lie on Shelley’s neck.
Listen to the speech of swans.
The minute you tried to do that, Tom, you were gone.