David Lehman
THE LAST LAUGH
"1 wouldn 't sleep with you if you were the last man on
earth." How often have we all been the targets of remarks as tiresome
and unfeeling as this! Yet, upon closer inspection , we may well be
wrong
to
feel insulted or rejected.
It
occurs to me th at when one sleeps
with a woman it is contingent upon knowing tha t there are indeed
many other potential lovers to be found in the world.
If
anyone of
them were by some chance to become the last and only woman on
earth, would one not feel tempted to decl ine?
Rachel Hadas
HILL
Uh-huh, you marri ed a bundle of troub les.
Here on the hi ll wind whooshes around m e,
sun leans down the sky.
Limbs stretched over the canopy
earth keeps proffering generously,
1 crumple up past and future.
Chi ldren's voices follow m e.
1 slip ahead
to
a stripped-down day
when I'll be nosta lgic in some cafe
for this baggage body.
I' ll conjure up house, brook , hi ll
where 1 once wished for an easy exile.
Unfailing gold of the past, still molten , flows.
A hawk is circling unknown carrion,
this juicy skin of sadness 1 take down.
