Under the settee, behind the leatherbound
copies of The Great Books, queued up menacingly,
like decorated infantrymen, laid out on the terrace
half-submerged in last night’s snow, pages chattering
in the wind like birds’ wings,
lie my unfinished journals.
When I run across one of these tell-tale reminders
of the hazards of procrastination, my sometimes haphazard
way of abandoning projects,
my first impulse is to burn the damn thing—
lying there seeming to chastise me,
to open its leathery jaws and bite my hand.
But inevitably I peek inside
and note the date: January,4 and ½ years ago.
“Dear Diary, ” I begin, “I promise to stay faithful
this time and will provide an entry every day—
every other day; oh, once a week.”
I think one of those Great Books
says something to the effect
that the word journal derives
from journey. If so, I’ve made
many, many stops on my way
from here to there.
Perhaps my next journal
will describe what I was doing
all that time.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem