The Retired Literary Critic Pauses In His Sunday Reading Poem by Ernest Hilbert

I still wonder who declined in this room
Before me, in this rented antique house,
As chips of light fleck the blown curtain.
The ceiling's like the lid of a tomb.
Who slept off a drunken soiree or doused
Lice with witch hazel? What trivia passed then?
The May afternoon remains cool and sad.
The bed is old and sunken to the side.
On this crude rostrum, hope is not enough.
I once loved a girl with dark hair. I had
Years to be happy. When did I decide
What was consequential, what was mere stuff?
Late cries rise like lost balloons from the park,
And day sinks into magnifying dark.