for William Packard
The day before your sixth birthday, Auden
wrote of sitting in a dive observing
a city caught up in fear and awe. When
he did, I suppose someone was serving
you dinner miles away, Mamaroneck,
pre-party promises as you slurped ade
while Auden sipped ale, alone in the dark
bar’s corner, napkin stained with words he made
stand at attention in eleven-line
stanzas. Some thirty years later, he told
you he had disowned those verses: a fine
line he had drawn for truth. Now, on this cold,
evil day, after you’ve turned sixty-eight,
we smell death, feel pain, can call his lines great.
Roger Armbrust
