Louis Dudek

Early Morning
Louis Dudek
From: The Caged Tiger. Montreal: Empyreal Press, 1997.



Something that never was,
that now is
and that again will not be­­

of which I am the observer
(who will also not be)
but who observes as from an eternity
of no time
the moment now,

the salesman who made a deal,
the young woman who paid him,
the red-lipped college girls, bold, a bit shy,
the counter girls on a coffee break,
the macho men,

all milling about unconscious
of one another
unconscious of the hand of time

that makes all things vanish, all fade,
all suffer change.
And they live today as if they were forever,
when they are here only for a day.

And I observe, and I am like them
only for a day