old marx

Today is a sad day. I dropped Vale off at the airport at 1:30 for her flight back to DC; she's spending tonight with Mom and Dad and then flies back to Chile early tomorrow morning. A couple of friends are over, and all four roommates, and we've had a low-key, fun evening, but I'm still overwhelmed by loneliness. Whatever emotions and feelings are running through me now are too fresh to write about or even really think about right now. So instead, I'll transcribe a poem from this week's New Yorker, by a Polish poet named Adam Zagajewski. It's called "Old Marx."

I try to envision his last winter,
London, cold and damp, the snow's curt kisses
on empty streets, the Thames' black water.
Chilled prostitutes lit bonfires in the park.
Vast locomotives sobbed somewhere in the night.
The workers spoke so quickly in the pub
that he couldn't catch a single word.
Perhaps Europe was richer and at peace,
but the Belgians still tormented the Congo.
And Russia? Its tyranny? Siberia?

He spent evenings staring at the shutters.
He couldn't concentrate, rewrote old work,
reread young Marx for days on end,
and secretly admired that ambitious author.
He still had faith in his fantastic vision,
but in moments of doubt
he worried that he'd given the world only
a new version of despair;
then he'd close his eyes and see nothing
but the scarlet darkness of his own lids.