Todd Swift is a 43-year-old Canadian expatriate writer, currently living in London, with an Irish wife. He is a poet, anthologist, teacher, blogger, emcee, enthusiast, activist, essayist, and sometime TV writer. He feels he has given way too much of his own time to his main obsession, poetry.
Todd Swift’s poems seem often to blend effortlessly
a conversational tone with formal verse. “Ballad of the Solitary Diner,” like
numerous other Swift poems, is written from the point of view of a speaker who
sees the gift of poetry as both a blessing and a curse. We who write poetry in 2009 know that there’s
a solitude that comes with the territory. I am not the only one who can relate
to the speaker’s desire to subsist on poetry books.
-- Greg Santos
Ballad of the Solitary Diner
When I eat alone, I am alone.
Thank God I have my books.
Friends? Not many.
My wife, in her tower, earning money.
A few who live in other countries.
Too far to go to share a meal.
When I sit down at noon
As sad as a man having married
The moon. You cannot love well
Someone you can’t share a spoon
With, be it soup or salad.
The waiter or waitress assumes
The identity of a temporary friend,
But they are busy with their errands
And soon go to other people.
Then, as my tea cools, and the day
Gets weak in the head and fails
To keep appearances up,
I put on my winter coat to pay.
Leave a pound for their trouble.
And go out the way I came in.
Thank God I have my books.
I can tell by the limited smiles
As I turn, I no longer have my looks.
It is a shame we have to eat at all,
It hurts us to have to be so open
And quiet, even as we appear social.
If I could get by on my poetry
I’d eat a page a day in my flat.
I’d stay thin, and not become fat
Has made me: yes, and with nothing
To show for the tedious work
Of getting it down, but one more check
And a dark walk home, through a town.
