"Alone"

Our dedicated staff of interns and graduate assistants are still busily preparing Volume One of Arnold Schnabel 's memoirs for publication in book form later this year, and so, in lieu of any new episodes at the moment, we present the following classic sonnet by our hero, which first saw light of day in the Olney Times of July 13, 1963.

“Alone”

Alone is not so bad; I breathe the air
and it’s my air; I look at the sky
and it’s my sky; I go for a walk
and this is my world. And now I stare
at things seen clearly with my mind’s eye,
at dark thrashing trees who whisper and talk
among themselves in a gas lamp’s glare,
as the singing ocean six blocks away
asks to join the party; it will bring wine
and music, and fishes and loaves, and rare
and precious sweets, and dance an antic hay
amidst five million stars: all this is mine.
alone is not alone; I sit in this chair,
alive at long last, and ready to dare.

(For links to many other Arnold Schnabel poems, and for entrée into his previously unpublished memoir Railroad Train to Heaven, go to the right hand column of this page.)