Living a different life I might have been happy.
Not merely enduring each day—that’d be happy.
From here the tall buildings downtown hide the hills.
There some man lives unseen and so is happy.
Her face grown wizened and despondent now
you see in photos was once radiantly happy.
Self-medicating with booze of several kinds
sustains the illusion I too will be happy.
Files full of letters from friends back there.
Rereading them now makes me less unhappy.
Harry Thomas
Harry Thomas has edited two books for Penguin UK, Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy and Montale in English, has done two books for UnGyve Press, Some Complicity and The Truth of Two: Selected Translations, and has two books coming out this year, Poems about Trees, an anthology, and The Occasional Demon, 36 Poems of Primo Levi, translated with Marco Sonzogni.
Also by Harry Thomas (see all)
- Eight Haiku - February 9, 2020
- Lovework - September 22, 2019
- Introduction to Poems About Trees - February 18, 2019
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