Lament for a Dinner Party
Certain we are too genteel to fail the test of social grace,
We gather in the evening to prove our culture
To honor someone's special date or lifetime triumph
Or sometimes just to know we aren't alone.
Dressing, I have a fantasy of conversation
Sharing the wit and wisdom of great minds
Whose language is the subject, verb and object of our talk
How we will dazzle one another with
The sparkle of our minds, the magic of their words
The art of thoughts,
The prestige of human life revealed.
We will, I fondly think, enrich each other
With deeper appreciation of our commons.
I mention names I recently surveyed
It doesn't matter who they are, new
As are the names referred to me.
Lacking a common opus, we fail ourselves.
The diversity of some as fatal to my hopes as the paucity of others.
We cannot find words to express ourselves
To bridge across the table
To open minds to unexplored realities
We talk instead as fowls gabble
Of nothingness and folly,
Pooling banal experience, and all the
ideas of our innocence, thoughts of our indulgence
knowledge of our ignorance, truths of our imaginations
And over all, the falsehoods of our convictions.
O, how we drive those home, to no avail.
Presided upon by some who never learned
To unbuckle the stern gravity of the pronoun me.