by David Ferry
The guest who came in to the street people’s suppers last night,
An elderly man with a lost smart little boy’s face and a look
As if he might turn against you anytime soon,
As if he’d just come into this world and he was extremely
Wary about what the world was going to be, and he said,
“If I ask you a question will you give me a truthful answer?”
And I said, “That depends on what the question is,”
Thinking the little elderly boy looked sophisticated and
As if he’d in fact been a long time in the world
And would get the tone right, and maybe he did, or maybe he didn’t;
At any rate he went on to ask the question,
“When I come into places like this and there are people holding
Coffee cups to their lips and they look at me,
Are they about to drink the coffee or not to drink the coffee?”
He was balancing the world on the tip of his witty unknowing nose.
I felt like I was falling down someplace else than anywhere there.
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