All My Sins Remembered

A misspent youth

All My Sins Remembered


Hamlet makes a speech at one point
“All my sins remembered...”
But Hamlet was a kid
I'm an old man now with a long,
sad history.
My sins are mostly hubris
At least most have been.

What other sins I've committed
Have all been incidental
Or the fatal drifting of youth
Toward what is at that moment
catching my attention.

There was that party I went to
in 1970 and stayed at until 1980.
I had no plan, no plan at all,
Just a long, slow drift
Through smoky, raucous bars,
Or sitting on the floor of lots of places.
Smoking and drinking,
In a long hazy set
Of Intellectual conversations
Of the aesthetics of beauty,
Wisdom, science and music
About which I never knew enough
To have an intelligent opinion.