DEDICATION TO HATE
Lee Upton
1.
Trifle. Take Time.
Make busy work.
Monger rumors. Stay up late.
Make friends. Indoctrinate.
2.
It should be flat
with sharp edges.
Or it’s a fence,
or a brick wall.
And yet it has to be cranked up somehow
while we have things to do or undergo.
Accounts. Surgery.
It’s not personal, we say.
It’s an accomplishment
that does one little lasting good.
Like a gift for croquet.
3.
He was good at sitting there and hating.
“It’s a free society,”
he liked to say. He could just about
stare you to death.
Hatred was a discipline,
a practice.
“When I was young
I was an open door,” he said.
“I learned.
But back then I didn’t have the time
or temperament for hate,
which requires
stillness, a certain depth
more than range,
memory capable of sharpening
around an image.
I thought: If I have to,
I’ll wait until I’m old to hate.
And then I realized: But we’re all old,
aren’t we?
It’s never too late.”
4.
A courtyard. A church.
A sudden drowsiness—
and our lying down right there on the grass.
Has it been twenty years?
You asked questions and then you stopped.
We hadn’t the faculty for hate,
and yet it might be said
we held to things too lightly.
We stood up and dusted ourselves off.
Waking, we didn’t know who we were.