Still Tragic After All These Years

 

The river behind the library

looks bottomless. Black current

smooths along, The bodies

of naked drowned teenagers

 

rarely surface to look around

and regret the world they left.

More often, a big limb torn

from a dying oak upstream

 

tumbles over the weir and prods

the brush as it slips toward Antrim.

a dozen miles north. No one

can name those washed away

 

in the hurricane before the war.

No one remembers the railroad

that trestled across at an angle,

but the footers remain in place.

 

I lean on a stone wall and watch

for the limber and lanky children

who exposed their gleaming puberty

only for the river to mock them.

 

All this happened so long ago

that the river has cleansed itself

by abrading on its stony bed,

leaving only me to blame.