[New-Poetry] A drunk, a lurcher

[Anny Ballardini]

An excellent poem. It describes a scene I have had in my mind for a while. I met a homeless in Key West. A beautiful man, 47? 49? I was much younger. He was ravaging garbage cans to find something to eat. I think beauty and estrangement work in a charismatic way both in Deborah Garrison's poem and in my thought. My homeless was well dressed, as Garrison's drunkard. This brings to the assumption that we are dealing with a sudden disgrace, to which follows the natural projection that it could happen to me/us any time. 
Garrison's drunkard does not look at her straight into her eyes. My homeless did. It would be interesting to speculate further on this.

You already sent this poem, if I am not wrong. Thus thank you for re-sending it.

From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 6:04 PM


>I Saw You Walking
> 
> I saw you walking through Newark Penn Station
> in your shoes of white ash. At the corner
> of my nervous glance your dazed passage
> first forced me away, tracing the crescent
> berth you'd give a drunk, a lurcher, nuzzling
> all corners with ill will and his stench, but
> not this one, not today; one shirt arm's sheared
> clean from the shoulder, the whole bare limb
> wet with muscle and shining dimly pink,
> the other full-sheathed in cotton, Brooks Bros.
> type, the cuff yet buttoned at the wrist, a
> parody of careful dress, preparedness --
> so you had not rolled up your sleeves yet this
> morning when your suit jacket (here are
> the pants, dark gray, with subtle stripe, as worn
> by men like you on ordinary days)
> and briefcase (you've none, reverse commuter
> come from the pit with nothing to carry
> but your life) were torn from you, as your life
> was not. Your face itself seemed to be walking,
> leading your body north, though the age
> of the face, blank and ashen, passing forth
> and away from me, was unclear, the sandy
> crown of hair powdered white like your feet, but
> underneath not yet gray -- forty-seven?
> forty-eight? The age of someone's father --
> and I trembled for your luck, for your broad,
> dusted back, half shirted, walking away;
> I should have dropped to my knees to thank God
> you were alive, o my God, in whom I don't believe.
> 
> --Deborah Garrison.  The New Yorker, 22 October 2001. Reprinted in  110
> Stories: New York Writes After September 11,edited by Ulrich Baer. New York
> University Press. 2002.
> 
> 
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
> Poetry Library:
> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
> ====================================================
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