This just happened to me on my way home from work. 10 minutes ago.

I was reading a play by this German romanticist playwright and listened to Albert Ayler on my IPod, in short being my pretentious self, as this toothless construction worker starts talking to me. He was sweating beer, or at least I smelled something that I felt had to be beer, and looked pretty shaken by heat, work and what must have been a tough life.

I thought he had asked me if the trolley had come by yet. So I took out my earphones and politely asked him to repeat his question. In fact he had wondered if I was reading poetry. Now, I get that a lot. People ask me what I read, I tell them its something German and then they tell me all about their feelings about Germany, their ancestors, their food preference and how Germany makes good beer but plays lousy soccer these days (in fact they did today…bummer). So my initial reaction was a sigh and I answered that I was not reading poetry but a play by Schiller. To my surprise he said he didn’t like Schiller much but he was a fan of Brecht and Rilke. I cannot imagine there are many construction workers in Charlottesville that even know that these guys are poets, let alone know how to pronounce their names. I was impressed, but still didn’t feel like sitting next to him on the bus.

On the bus I could not focus on my reading because I kept trying to imaging why he knew these poets and what his story might be. When we both got off at the same stop, I smiled, mostly because I felt bad for my initial judging the book by its cover, but also because I so obviously chose to sit on the other side of the bench. He smiled back and gave me a little piece of paper. Oh great, a pamphlet dude, I thought. “I’m a poet myself,” he said. “I was the greatest poet of my time but now I can’t make a lousy dime! (note: even that rhymes!) If you go back to class and you need a poet, you got one.” With these words he walked off.

Again I expected the worst, perhaps some religious nonsense ramble or something like the pseudo-poetic trash of Wolf Zendik. But in fact the poem he gave me is really pretty. Clicheed metaphors perhaps. Impure rhymes and rhythms, certanily, but still very pretty. I’d say somewhere between Tennyson and Gary Snider. A google search of his name gave me no result. It was a weird experience, and I don’t have a good point to make by posting it, but I though I’d share. Do any of you know him, or have even some of his poems?

In thy darkest hour

Shine on, eternal fire — burn
Alone amid the void;
If none should love thee, thou must yearn
That someone sees thy Joy.

When night’s vast desert frames thy soul
An island in the darkest sea,
Then a star must shine alone
Ere that lovers look for thee.

F. Carroll Harrison

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