Reason

You're free of the bias toward the familiar

That the senses and feelings can't shake free of,

Familiar faces and rooms in familiar neighborhoods.

You love the laws that are universal,

Those that don't change with custom and climate,

That shine with the same clarity everywhere.

For you it's obvious that the hungry of Madagascar,

However remote from the senses and feelings,

Are just as needy as the hungry of home.

And at the public meeting about the wisdom

Of damming the river, you give the waitress

As fair a hearing as the banker or judge.

It sounds like a good idea, you say, all things considered,

To provide the farmers dependable irrigation

And the towns down river protection from floods.

As for the village or two that must soon

Be turned into lake bed, you don't dismiss the nostalgia

Flooding the senses and feelings with a scornful

"Like it or lump it." You reason with them.

This is their chance to prove their detractors mistaken,

To choose public good over private convenience.

And then you show them the plans of the village

You're going to build for them on higher ground,

A village of brick, not clapboard, with pleasing lake views.

And when they invite you for a farewell stroll

At dusk through streets scheduled for sacrifice,

With patience you pause beneath the marquee of the

Tivoli

While they recall the children who waited in line

For the double feature on Saturday afternoons.

With patience you pause by the park where the kite club

Flew handmade kites after school all spring.

The new town too, you tell them, will have kites and

movies.

All that they'll miss when they walk its streets

Will be a haze of associations, a ghostly mantle

That now they cast unawares over all before them.

Don't they want to make contact, in the time that's left

them,

You ask them gently, with things as they are,

And not with shadows. If they promise to work all day

In the here and now, you'll promise not to reprove them

If they feel the need to sit by the fire all evening

And dream of how much softer the light was

In the town that's lost, how peaceful its busy streets,

How joyful. With the evidence out of reach,

It's your word against theirs; and for them

Repetition suffices for proof. When you go to bed

They'll still be wondering what their ghosts will do

Now that the only town they've ever wanted to haunt

Is closed to all but fishes. And how lonely they'll feel

Not free to imagine generations to come

Fostered by the same houses that fostered them.

But home for you is wherever the thoughtful few

Gather to deliberate and reach a consensus

That the wise of any nation would be glad to second.

So you must tell yourself when the senses and feelings

Complain you never listened to their opinions,