The man waiting for the last-second reprieve
Barely dared to breathe, much less check
To see. Instead, he retreated to reading
Reviews of movies, books, and theater,
An old obsession that some weeks took up
More easily dreamed hours than the reading
Of real books. A decade ago this weekend,
He’d read the phrase “dented ordinariness”
In a film review by Anthony Lane, and today
The phrase returned to him, fair description
Of what he was doing in living out his last
Weekend—breathing in dented ordinariness,
Reading of a new, “feral” Richard III bringing
“Oblivion upon himself,” thinking how little
Villainy oblivion really requires to descend
On anyone, and listening to the recording
Of Sibelius he had been listening to, those
Ten years earlier exactly, when he had read
That earlier review. As if the trembling wires
And tent stakes of memory could somehow
Anchor the inward mind so far back in time
That thoughts could swim upstream again.
The day was heartbreakingly crisp and lovely
With October light, not ordinary, no, no, no.
A portrait of ordinary: ordinary sun, ordinary
People in ordinary clothes, ordinary birds
In the shrubs, ordinary weekend activities
Delineated by one of Auden’s Old Masters.
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