Evening Meditation

Isaac sat on the swing

On his slaked wooden porch

Looking out past a field

where fat sheep grazed.

The tilled field ended

with a twisted fence

beyond which old oaks intertwined

so that slant western light

barely shone through.

He heard a wail unwind

From the obscuring trees,

Assuming it must be

some preyed-on animal.

The porch’s overhang

Sheltered vexed Isaac from

The sleeting rain and wind,

From humid summer heat

Of that late breezeless hour,

But could not shelter him

From his own thoughts

Because one can’t think not to think

Or choose to block our memory,

But more because what burdened him,

I must assume,

Was inescapable uncertainty—

Like weather in his mind—

For nothing that he could define.

His memory surged back

To when he told a joke about

A crippled man,

Cuckolded by his wife,

Forgetting that there was

A short, clubfooted man there in the room,

And he was overwhelmed

By his incredible stupidity

When tidal silence

Rippled through the audience.

How many times had he seen

Needless pain inflicted by

Somebody unaware,

Without intention to cause hurt?

We just don’t ever know enough,

Or have sufficient time

To think enough, Isaac

Commiserated to himself,

Or maybe some occurrences,

Isaac half wished,

Are best not understood

Or best just left to accident.

Perhaps the vague remorse—

If that was that he felt—

Was larger, more impersonal:

The failure to alleviate

A stranger’s suffering

Or take that starved cat in

Who’s rubbing bleakly

Up against the window pane?

Yet was such suffering

Inseparable from

Some deep, inscrutable design

Like that cry from the woods

Or his unwilled stupidity?

Why blame himself,

He surely must have thought,

For what has always been

Unchangeable—

Like causing unintended pain,

Like wishing not to think

The thoughts one thinks?

And Isaac’s memory flew back

To when he was a boy before

The soldiers came,

To when his father took

The silver candelabrum

That his grandfather

Had polished every year

To celebrate the feast of lights,

And, for protection,

Buried it within the woods.

He knows he cannot know

Himself, and Isaac

Could not figure out, although

He must have tried,

Whether his dark-eyed father

Dug the candelabrum out

After the shouting soldiers left,

Nor could he find a reason why

His father might

Have left it there to merge

With other fossils of defeat,

As if it were a sacrifice

To the unknown, without

An explanation

That could ease a young man’s mind.