Read the appended. Then again. Are you moved? If not, skip these paragraphs: why explore what leaves you cold? Poems are like people that way, either you cotton to them or you don’t.

                  A warm midsummer night reminds the poet of similar nights, decades since, in her early adolescence. I say “her” but that’s an assumption based on the poet’s name; this is not a poem about gender. The poet lived far from the city then, in a comfortable, hard-working, farming community, where teenagers could do as they pleased after chores were done, their parents knew where they were.

                  What they liked doing on such nights was to assemble at the pond formed by the marble quarry, their whole group, and get naked together and swim and neck. Occasionally the necking went too far and babies came and the misery of premature parenthood. The atmosphere was less romantic than ritualistic: it almost didn’t matter whom you paired with as long as it was somebody and you weren’t left out. You were doing what kids did at this age, becoming a grownup, and you wanted to and didn’t. You wanted to neck, sure, but not the baby. You wanted to leave the 

the village where you were born 
and in another country […] become very rich, very powerful –

 because that’s what people did and you didn’t want not to but, oh

        always you will mourn something you left behind, even though 
you can't say what it was, 
and eventually you will return to seek it.

That’s the mystery of the moment and the poem. What was that “something you left behind?” The assurance, maybe, of that rural village, where everybody knew each other and their ways; the thrill of discovering sex, more thrilling than the eventual routine; the security of solidarity with your cohort? Hard to say what’s missing from your success story except (the poem suggests) the poet’s feeling lost, alone.

                  The poet’s gait, like her gaze, is unsentimental, unself-pitying, unflamboyant, almost plodding: not one fancy word, some anti-poetic (“cooperating,” “requiring”), some threadbare (“which meant helping out in the fields”), some exhausted beyond exertion (“very old,” “very rich”, “very powerful”): unenthused. She’s remembering because she can’t help herself, she needs to know why she’s hurting, but she’s hardly excited to be making this poem.

                  Her sadness saddens. The starkness recalls the hopeless palette of Waiting for Godot.” Almost. But for one splash of brightness, an explosion of vividness:

And the next day, we were kids again, sitting on the front steps in the morning, 
eating a peach.  Just that, but it seemed an honor to have a mouth. 

For a moment, we’ve exited night, darkness, murkiness, the onus of loneliness, obligation, isolation, expectation onto that joyous front porch, eating that juicy peach. “It seemed an honor to have a mouth,” the poet smiles, recalling – a mouth to bite and savor being, a mouth to compose a poem.

                  Two lines stick like a nettle in memory.

 One boy worked for an old lady, building shelves. 
The house was very old, maybe built when the mountain was built. 

                  This boy is the only individual specified in the poem. All the other actors are generic – “we” or “you”. Who is he? Why does he alone merit remembering?

                  I’m guessing it’s because he was a builder. Like the poet. Adding shelves to a house that was very old. Like the poet. A house as old as the hills themselves.

* 

Midsummer

Louise Glück (1943-2023)

On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry, 
the boys making up games requiring them to tear off the girls' clothes 
and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer 
and they wanted to exhibit them, the brave ones 
leaping off the high rocks — bodies crowding the water. 

The nights were humid, still. The stone was cool and wet, 
marble for graveyards, for buildings that we never saw, 
buildings in cities far away. 

On cloudy nights, you were blind. Those nights the rocks were dangerous, 
but in another way it was all dangerous, that was what we were after. 
The summer started. Then the boys and girls began to pair off 
but always there were a few left at the end — sometimes they'd keep watch, 
sometimes they'd pretend to go off with each other like the rest, 
but what could they do there, in the woods? No one wanted to be them. 
But they'd show up anyway, as though some night their luck would change, 
fate would be a different fate. 

At the beginning and at the end, though, we were all together. 
After the evening chores, after the smaller children were in bed, 
then we were free. Nobody said anything, but we knew the nights we'd meet 
and the nights we wouldn't. Once or twice, at the end of summer, 
we could see a baby was going to come out of all that kissing. 

And for those two, it was terrible, as terrible as being alone. 
The game was over. We'd sit on the rocks smoking cigarettes, 
worrying about the ones who weren't there. 

And then finally walk home through the fields, 
because there was always work the next day. 
And the next day, we were kids again, sitting on the front steps in the morning, 
eating a peach.  Just that, but it seemed an honor to have a mouth. 
And then going to work, which meant helping out in the fields. 
One boy worked for an old lady, building shelves. 
The house was very old, maybe built when the mountain was built. 

And then the day faded. We were dreaming, waiting for night. 
Standing at the front door at twilight, watching the shadows lengthen. 
And a voice in the kitchen was always complaining about the heat, 
wanting the heat to break. 

Then the heat broke, the night was clear. 
And you thought of  the boy or girl you'd be meeting later. 
And you thought of walking into the woods and lying down, 
practicing all those things you were learning in the water. 
And though sometimes you couldn't see the person you were with, 
there was no substitute for that person. 

The summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting. 
And for those who understood such things, the stars were sending messages: 
You will leave the village where you were born 
and in another country you'll become very rich, very powerful, 
but always you will mourn something you left behind, even though 
you can't say what it was, 
and eventually you will return to seek it.