It’s getting harder to remember the Thirties.
Public gestures are so replacing private embraces
That, thinking back, I can visualize old Cactus Jack
Gamer better than some of the sunburned faces
Of girls I once thought I wanted to marry.
It’s all very sad, this furious emptying
Of musty privacy which will finally leave
Only tundras of starlit history.
I can say: “We stood this way on some day.”
But which of three hundred and sixty-five?
Summer or winter? Mostly, I can’t remember—
I can remember we were very much alive
One winter when all West Tennessee was glazed
With ice that crystalled the trees and caked the roofs.
Gullies in the creeks grew wider that year