"My Lost Youth" by A.J.M. Smith

Westmount Park, around 1920

My Lost Youth 

by A.J.M. Smith

I remember it was April that year, and afternoon.
There was a modish odour of hyacinths, and you
Beside me in the drawing room, and twilight falling
A trifle impressively, and a bit out of tune.

You spoke of poetry in a voice of poetry,
And your voice wavered a little, like the smoke of your
    Benson & Hedges
And grew soft as you spoke of love (as you always did!),
Though the lines of your smile, I observed, were a little
     sententious.

I thought of my birthplace in Westmount and what that
     involved
-- An ear quick to recoil from the faintest 'false note'.
I spoke therefore hurriedly of the distressing commonness
     of American letters,
Not daring to look at your living and beautiful throat.

'She seems to be one who enthuses,' I noted, excusing
     myself,
Who strove that year to be only a minor personage out of
     James
Or a sensitive indecisive guy from Eliot's elegant shelf.
'What happens,' I pondered fleeing, 'to one whom Reality
     claims . . . ?'

            •                   •                •

I teach English in the Middle West; my voice is quite good;
My manners are charming; and the mothers of some of my
     female students
Are never tired of praising my two slim volumes of verse.


A.J.M. Smith, Poems, New & Collected, Oxford University Press, 1967