With All The Usual Sighs Poem by gershon hepner

History will not avert
her eyes, with all the usual sighs,
from memories that always hurt
and will not less us narcotize,
because the moments that are lost
can’t be regained recalling them,
illusory as Pentecost
or stars that lead to Bethlehem.

Inspired, a week after my 70th birthday, by a poem, “The old story, ” by William Logan in The New Criterion, May 2008. I copy the first four lines and the last two:

After the Blitz, her mother had begun an affair. So she said.
No one would have called her wellbred,

but she knew how to fill a low-cut dress,
had a fetching smile and a tongue for success….

History, that Chanel-clad thief, averts her eyes,
in cruelty, perhaps, but with the usual sighs.

5/9/08