EIGHTY
                                            
                                         (For Stanley Keleman)

Time has stamped

each page done or turn or next

and yet these can be read

backwards, letters running on, spaces

removed, the punctuation

erased: scrolls, say, like the Talmud

opened and recited, the man-still-a-boy

following the words, fingering

the truths, looking out a window,

dreaming of escape. They come

upon us again; the dead

in their stubbornness, clinging.

They wear the old robes of magic, of myth,

changing shapes, exchanging masks,

tip-toeing at dusk through an open

door we had closed. We have come

this far, have so much further

to go, tight-roping above

the abyss, crossing the fields,

breaking new ground. The cave

releases its animals, etched, empty-skinned,

on the walls, the brightness of day

reduced to a flame. Sunlight in Brooklyn,

as I remember it, had no room

for shadows, blinded us, playing

our games, sewer to sewer,

looking up at the sky, ready

for whatever it held , filling

the apartment I emptied out

after my parents died, brimming

with nothingness, almost

a void. The meanings escape,

climbing the bars, running on all fours,

leaping fences, soaring beyond houses,

becoming, as I look out my window,

hummingbirds, butterflies, leaves

breaking branch-free in the garden.

Oh, Brooklyn seems so far away:

rings in a tree, lines on a face,

my grandfather bent over his books

hunting for God, seeking a future,

lost in the past. Time does it,

dances, as they say, rings around us,

dizzies us, pinning tails on a donkey,

bundled up, leaving the party,

waving: goodnight, little girls...

Eighty! Watch, Stanley, how the years

run forward and back, circle around,

creating a world without end, a pink

ball as it bounces over the shingles,

suddenly present, only a memory,

hit by a boy with a stick, long ago.

--Peter Marin