A World That Was Poem by Richard Greene

As I turn on the radio
this Saturday afternoon
opera swells out
from where I left the dial
and I’m transmitted back
more than half the century
to those peaceful prewar days
when I had no intimation
of what the future held,
and our radio
with its gothic wooden case
was tuned to the Met
in the living room
surrounded by birch and magnolia trees
and the long, smooth slope of the lawn.

I associated opera then
with dull times
when I was house-bound
and would restlessly quarter
that thicket of sound
chafing for something to do.
For years after
I never cared much for opera,
but it sings to me now
of a world that was
in a child’s hopeful eyes.