This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is Harvey Shapiro’s “Monday,” from his 1988 collection National Cold Storage Company: New and Selected Poems. On September 30th, Wesleyan released Shapiro’s posthumous collection, A Momentary Glory: Last Poems, edited by Norman Finkelstein. Shapiro wrote honestly about life, love, sexuality, aging, and death. 

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Monday

Everybody thinks the past is real.
The window and the skull
Admit light. The past comes through
Like that—undifferentiated,
Hallucinatory, of no weight.
Sleepless that night, he saw the
Room close-woven, a nest
Of chairs, tables, rug
The past was filtering through.
It had no odor, no
Emotion. You could not
Say that in the silences
The past came in
Like water over sand.
There was no movement.
You could not draw the blind.

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HARVEY SHAPIRO published his first book of poetry in 1953. He taught at Cornell University and Bard College before joining the staffs of Commentary and The New Yorker. In 1957 he became an editor of The New York Times Magazine and was editor of The New York Times Book Review from 1975 until 1983. He lived in Brooklyn, New York.