Clik here to view.
These roles, these arrangements
have nothing at all to do with love.
You could mention the death of your parents.
A hint that your wife is leaving and you're thrown
back into need and its shame.
You do your job pretty well, but love?
Everyone has a role and it revolves around
going to work or going out to dinner
and then going home. Love (you know what I mean, sex, and that shame)
is a completely different thing.
It was a cold night in January
and my son (small part) was in an Arthur Miller play.
It kind of freaked him out that mom and dad
Were in the front row.
We were near the white-haired actor who played the lawyer
with a mumbling authenticity, his desk set up near us for his scenes,
the two young American guys laughing at the singing Italian immigrant.
The nearness of theater startles you.
Afterwards my son told us the lead of Miller's play and his wife, Miller's character Beatrice,
were married in real life
(his daughter in the play seemed a little old for the part).
This was the burly guy's first acting job and in real life he played the flute.
My son's theater acquaintance, an actor perfect for a cop role,
greeted us shyly out of costume when it was over,
eyes that looked but didn't look,
and he became my symbol for the night,
a symbol of what? I don't know.
Myself? Who did a little theater in my day?
I remember my 20s. I was so lost!
He sometimes gave my son a lift, but not tonight;
he simply had a kindness and a solidity about him, and he was gone.
My wife and I drove my son,
same height as me, a little less lanky,
to his temporary, just-out-of-college, walk up
in a New England working class neighborhood like any other,
with his two roommates, an off-and-on couple.
We listened to his pop playlist on the ride.
(An obscure Donovan number from Hurdy Gurdy Man
using "hippie" warmly in its lyrics.)
I noticed helplessly he spoke to his mom, not me.
Arthur Miller can have Eddie, the longshoreman lout,
("a rat" his daughter called him!)
the play's big role, tragically at the center,
the pity and pride he expressed, confused.
Arthur Miller gets his Marilyn Monroe,
this famous play I saw tonight written at my birth.
Arthur Miller, you can have all that,
just like this prose poem of mine that won't matter.
But what do I want?
Who am I?
Where will I go?
O poem sweet and rare.
They don't care.
