Everything Else in the World

by Stephen Dunn

Too young to take pleasure

from those privileged glimpses

we're sometimes given after failure

or to see the hidden opportunity

in not getting what we want,

each day I subwayed into Manhattan

in my new, blue serge suit,

looking for work. College, I thought,

had whitened my collar, set me up,

but I'd majored in history.

What did I know about the world?

At interviews, if asked about the world,

I might have responded - citing Carlyle -

Great men make it go, I want to be one of those.

But they wanted someone entry-level,

pleased for a while to be small.

Others got the jobs;

no doubt, later in the day, the girls.

At Horn & Hadarts, for solace

at lunchtime, I'd make a sandwich emerge

from its cell of pristine glass.

It took just a nickle and a dime.

Nickles and dimes could make

a middleman disappear, easy as that,

no big deal, a life or two

destroyed, others improved.

But I wasn't afraid of capitalism.

All I wanted was a job like a book

so good I'd be finishing it

for the rest of my life.

Had my education failed me?

I felt a hankering for the sublime,

its dangerous subversions

of the daily grind.

Oh I took a dull, well-paying job.

History major? the interviewer said, I think

you might be good at designing brochures.

I was. Which filled me with desire

for almost everything else in the world.

By The Book - proceeds to benefit ACF