PoetryAloud

---

David Adès Reads

To You, Reader of This Poem

Now that you are here,
now that you have turned aside
                                                   for a moment
from all the other parts of your life
                                                   (their keening, their calling)
and given this page your eyes,
whilst elsewhere the endless ritual
of activity goes on --
 
lovers tender in each other's arms,
students at their books, cooks at their kitchens,
patients drowsy in their hospital beds --
 
ask yourself what you have gained
and what you have lost,
how your memories and your thoughts
                                                              have changed
since you began reading these lines,
 
how different you are now
from whom you were before,
as I am different at the end of this poem
to the man who began with an empty page.

                                                   Return to PoetryAloud                                    Read David Adès poetry here.