Synchronicity: Tom Savage and Me

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I was planning and looking forward to hearing Anne Waldman and Vincent Katz read some poetry at 192 Books—it would have been fun. But I do not move as fast as I used to, or time is moving faster to my slower and I’m not quite in sync yet. I shouldn’t have taken a nap, nor missed that bus. At 5th Avenue, I turned back, sadly, bitterly, self-reproaching, too late, half way there. I jumped off the M14 going west for the M14 going east, going home, and who is sitting there? Tom Savage! “Don,” he says excited to see me, “I’ve just written a poem with you in it. I have it in here somewhere.” Tom starts looking through his bag stuffed to the max with papers and books. “Take your time.” I said. Digging in, Tom finds and hands it to me: the poem in an envelope addressed to me!

Too late for one thing, on time for another, a few days later, I’ve read the poem and like it very much. I’ve scanned it as well for everyone to see. It is a poem about censorship. As Tom listens to Russian composers who were banned by Stalin (Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Mayakovsky, and Sergei Prokofiev), he writes what is timely.
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