I Met My Solitude

Naomi Replansky

1918 –

2023

I met my Solitude. We two stood glaring.

I had to tremble, meeting her face to face.

Then she saying, and I with bent head hearing:

“You sent me forth to exile and disgrace,

“Most faithful of your friends, then most forsaken,

Forgotten in breast, in bath, in books, in bed.

To someone else you gave the gifts I gave you,

And you embraced another in my stead.

“Though we meet now, it is not of your choosing.

I am not fooled. And I do not forgive.

I am less kind, but did you treat me kindly?

In armored peace from now on let us live.”

So did my poor hurt Solitude accuse me.

Little was left of good between us two.

And I drew back: “How can we stay together,

You jealous of me, and I laid waste by you?

“By you, who used to be my good provider,

My secret nourisher, and mine alone.

The strength you taught me I must use against you,

And now with all my strength I wish you gone.”

Then she, my enemy, and still my angel,

Said in that harsh voice that once was sweet:

“I will come back, and every time less handsome,

And I will look like Death when last we meet.”

Copyright © 1994 by Naomi Replansky. “I Met My Solitude” originally appeared in The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems, 1934–1994 (Another Chicago Press, 1994). Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved.

About Not Writing

Tongue-tied, I stand before

Myself as inquisitor.

I loved to mark time

With a beat, with rhyme.

Time marked me with its thumb,

Slowed down the pendulum.

Slowed it down, or stopped:

Words were lopped, words dropped—

No use to devise

Reasons or alibis.

Now, strangely, I draw breath

Well past my ninetieth.

What’s begun is almost done,

Still I must brood upon

The much tha

Naomi Replansky

2018

Catalogue

My blurring eyes, my deafened ears—

O careless sadism of the years!

Sun-loving and sun-ravaged skin—

One-sided love has done you in.

My teeth—less said, less missed!—my heart—

My runaway, my telltale heart—

Heart whose misfirings can defeat

The pulse of this iambic beat!

(While hypochondria detects

Whatever ill it hears of next.)

In couplets that are not heroic

I try to say, in accents stoic:

Naomi Replansky

2018

The Contrary Muse

Poet (kneels stiffly):

I beg you, Muse, come down, come down and redeem me!

You used to arrive any time, you would come for no reason.

Now, though the sweat of death stood on my forehead,

No song would be shaken.

Muse:

I pay no heed to prayers or to reproaches.

I bless those who burn, but they must not burn only for me.

Turn your passion elsewhere. Then, when least you remember

My touch, I may touch you.

Naomi Replansky

2018

Poems

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I Met My Solitude

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