Religion

6 Can / Control What I Shall Do and Become, QUESTIONS ' . .

STEPHEN DUNN

"The Last Hours"

This poem, like Lynch' s essay, refltcts on a young man's decision about whether to follow hi s father' s career path, this time a path that leads into the corporate world. Now, years later, the poet recalls an afternoon on which he did exercise some control over what he would become. This is not to say that he knew what lay ahead : "I know only what I don't want," he thinks.

What does the poem tell us about the context within which he made this choice? Note the histo rical moment, his family connections, and the purpose of the company for wh ich he works. How might these affect his ability to act? How do parallel factors in your own context liberate you, or not, to exert influence on what you will become?

"The Last Hours " was published in the book that won the 2001 Pulit- zer Prize for Poetry. Stephen Du nn teaches creative writing at Stockton College in New Jersey as well as in workshops around the country.

There's some innocence left, and these are the last hours of an empty afternoon at the office, and there's the clock on the wall, and my friend Frank in the adjacent cubicle selling himself on the phone.

I'm twenty-five, on the shaky ladder up, my father's son, corporate, dean -shaven , and I know only what I don't want, whJCh 1s almost everything I have.

A meeting ends. •

From Different Hours (New y; k or : W. W , Norton, 2002), p. 55.

438

STEPHEN DUNN • "The Last Hours"

·n serious suits, intelligent men t.1en, 1 been thinking hard about marketing snacks

hove h · · d f" ' 'II b ck now to t eir wm ow o nces, worried ove 3 Jll d The big boss, Horace,

or pro~ed them in to approve this, reject that - had ca h ' '

b. boss a first-name, ow s-your-,amily the 1g ' . kind of assassin , who hkes me.

It's 1964. Th iXties haven't begun yet. Cuba is a larger name th:n\ietnam. The Soviets are behind everything that could be wrong. Where I sit it's exactly nineteen mmutes to five. My phone rings. Horace would like me to stop in before ] leave. Stop in. Code words , leisurely words, that mean now.

Would I be willing to take on this? Would X's office, who by the way is no longer with us, be satisfactory? About money, will this be enough? J smile, I say yes and yes and yes, but - I don't know from what calm place this comes - I'm translating his beneficence into a lifetime, a life of selling snacks, talking snack strategy, thinking snack thoughts.

On the elevator down it's a small knot, I'd like to say, of joy. That's how I tell it now, here in the future , the fear long gone. By the time I reach the subway it's grown, it's outsized, an attitude fmally come round, and I say it quietly to myself: I quit, and keep saying it, knowing I will say it, sure of nothing else but.

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