Ira Sadoff: Emendation

I don’t have to go back
To my childhood, there’s nothing there
I still want; but of miracles
Left to me, I’d like to restore a look
I once wore and release it in the air.
 
That year I found painting and hiking,
I read all night long, struggling
With my place in the universe. Climbing 
Rock by rock to the Knife Edge
And taking in the aged panorama.
 
I fell in love almost daily: everyone
Was enthralling if you truly looked at them.
Each had a mother, a few had lost
Their fathers early. They too heard shouts
In their houses. How dear they are,
 
Even if amour’s hammered out of them.
Those faces: rugged and turgid
As they’ve become, if they’ve endured,
A boy or girl inside still calls,
Come back, come back and save us.

Copyright 2020 Ira Sadoff. From Country, Living by Ira Sadoff (Alice James Books, 2020).

Ira Sadoff was born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York. He has taught at colleges and universities including the University of Virginia, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and the M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College. He is currently the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of Literature at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He is the author of nine volumes of poetry.