Ann Goldsmith
Ann Goldsmith
Dear Irving,
Surely eighty is an impossibility. Life gets more surreal as it goes along, don't you think? I don't remember how long ago it was that I first heard you read, bought my first Irving Feldman books, went to hear you one time in Hamburg, compared notes on hip replacements.... But this past weekend I've had a marvellous time rereading your poems. One after another; book after book; what a feast. I hope the actual day overflows with pleasures. The attached arrived after two days of Feldman-immersion--which is not to hold you accountable for its shortcomings!
All best and many splendid returns,
Ann
GLASSES
For Irving Feldman, at 80
This morning my glasses fell apart
as I reached for them from the bed.
A tiny silver screw flew out with the right lens.
Of course it was Sunday.
All day I have been wearing the old
heavy pair with the thick lenses.
The computer screen blurs,
the near world has been shrink-wrapped.
My cereal spoon is for dolls.
The can of cat food shrivels
to a kitten toy. I play Desperation
with bite-size playing cards
whose numbers swim
in spun kaleidoscopes,
brilliant and vague and distant.
And the wind, he wrote, came on as before.
Oh, yes, I must remember this.
And the gold and green
in their fangs and leaves,
bright or bloody, blowing or still,
planet- or paper-clip-size,
with the perfect speed of the daffodil—
its one foot in the ground,
clamped and aspiring.
And tomorrow, through dazzlingly
mended glasses, I will surely
see beyond myself,
or maybe by the time I’m eighty.
asg 9/08.19