Matthew Monte "History Lesson" at "Poets 11" 2016
Channel: San Francisco Public Library
Date: 2016-10-05

Unlived history is
A seed of doubt, deferred
When you meet the players
In our graves and tomes
Or when you sit up in the middle of the night
“I have lived so many years…”
A strange utterance, given your age
It falls from conversation where
Someone exhales a scrim of smoke — or were they candles? —
Spent in a party
You exit from sleep to your
Dim house
Scattered with nightlights
For visiting family who don’t know their way, you
Tiptoe amongst sleeping relations
A laptop screen is winking in the kitchen
Good thing you own a telescope and a tape recorder
Things get lost on the Internet, that strange
Universe — hardly a vessel of consciousness —
Its saddest illusion:
That multitudes contain you
So glide through the sleeping house
Part the curtains in the snoring living room
The in-laws say, secretly, they’ve always doubted your buying power
But the stars are out
You say we got this far, didn’t we?
But never to anyone’s face
Out the window
Out there, you flew in from elsewhere on that stretch of sky, once
It’s easy to believe in past lives when considering the present
A niece smiles in her sleep
Pills on the coffee table
Keep the elder hearts regular
Though stars are fading
Like this bout with wakefulness
Pass the uncorrupted
Sleep of innocence
And experience pulls blankets up to chins
Adjusting stuffed animals
Passing laden bookshelves it seems
You have hauled entire shelves from
Mr. Ferlinghetti’s reading room
Up to this word-crammed flat
One volume at a time
And to the brink of divorce — but some day
They’ll all thank you
For these containers
Of consciousness are
Old newfound words, the next ones
On the path, assembling and sorting
Solid meanings locking against
One another, earning their keep, a foothold
In stories that tell you stories you tell
Towards your ascension to what
You could not yet say, except that
Life has you
History has found you
Not the other way around
How un-“American” yet
How at ease, are these
Sleepwalking bones
In San Francisco:
A republic all its own