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Songs of My Sorrows

by Steve Gaines

I am chased through time
by the failures and promises of my past
I do not regret so much
as I wonder about them
to be satisfied with the results of my life
is not a matter of final judgment
results can be counted only once I stop moving…
or breathing
death…
of whatever sort…
is the result of having lived…
in whatever life
so to think about “mending my ways”
or simply learning from the errors of the past
are nonsequiturs
errors can become successes
after time rubs them smooth

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Lament

by Steve Gaines

yet another lament

in me
hidden behind a soft spreading waistline
lies an aging man alone

he is limping quietly along
such a well-worn path
in his creaks and cracks
he is the only one ever
to suddenly come smack up against middle age

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Knowing A Man

Author’s Note: Knowing A Man was written in the Summer of 1960 while I was a graduate student at Iowa University. This poem was inspired by an old Columbia University professor of mine who had stopped in Iowa City to see me on his way to visit his father in Mexico City. When I asked him why he was visiting his father, he replied, “My father is very old, and I never knew his dreams.”

You only know a man when you know his dreams.
His troubles tell you only how he lives.
To discover that which is instead of that which seems,
Don’t ask of his pain,
Ask of his dreams.

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On Being Tossed

I’m being tossed in a thousand different directions,

Each with a meaning in time and space,
Each to promise a kind of perfection,
Each to promise an honorable place.

But where is the throne?
Where is the throne,
That will smother the moan,
of being tossed in a thousand different directions?