Eddie Condon at the New Colonial

RAYMOND SOUSTER

unchanged, honest as the hard

lines of time laid

on your face, Mr. C

and after fourteen years

not too many things are still as good

or even try to be

Old Battered One.

THE CHANGE

The river the same,

the ducks, the gulls there

birds I had seen before,

certainly the lovers

walking with the same arms round

fingers touching,

dryness in, stillness from

the long grass the same

as the leaves were, fallen

on the path year ago;

but something had changed

and it suddenly came-

I was the one

who had been transformed,

who would never walk

by the river the first

warm week of November

quite the same unencumbered

fool again.

Structure

28 lines · 9 stanzas