[b]A Century Years of Earl Grey[/b]
At midnight an impromptu meal of tea
And toast with jam prepared with mild gloom
To cap a long and weary fact-checked evening.
And who would give their lives, after all
For toast and tea—or say so,
At least, give toast and tea
Some stake in the antic roll-call
Of things we exist by?
Still, although we give our thoughts to
Work and love and a million other
Spangled ornaments,
It is tea and toast I call on now.
And if I have not known you too well,
It isn’t some fuck-up in the way the universe
Operates, or an indication of some
Miscalibrated eye. The world demands
Uncomplicated friendships, people
To nod to, things to be small
And good and not dwelt on,
And if there is not much to say
In a poem like this, whose fault is that?
Enough to say, maybe, thanks
For all the drinks, I think maybe
We got high once or twice,
You seem like you’d be good at
Painting, and all that
Talk about Robert Whitehead, too,
And if I had a vegan taquieria sure
I’d let you work there,
To someone who in plenty of time
Has not made life any worse,
Which is worth a poem at the minimum.
And to anyone, if you prefer
To give yourself a god of any kind,
Give it small dimensions,
Let it be a god with room in
Its galaxies for what-all Tolstoy knew,
For kids who for a minute gift any minor
Kindness (as if there could be
Any minor Kindness) on anyone
At all, who with infinite time
And a better world we might
Have known better
But wish splendid mercies on anyway,
For the brown and gold splay
On whole-wheat bread,
For the blemished half-moon
Of soy milk in black tea’s mottled sky.
