Poem-A-Day: Late August on the Lido by John Hollander

Late August on the Lido   by John Hollander   To lie on these beaches for another summer Would not become them at all, And yet the water and her sands will suffer When, in the fall, These golden children will be taken from her.   It is not the gold they bring: enough of that Has shone in the water for ages And in the bright theater of Venice at their backs; But the final stages Of all those afternoons when they played and sat   And waited for a beckoning wind to blow them Back over the water again Are scenes most necessary to this ocean. What actors then Will play when these disperse from the sand below them?   All this over until, perhaps, next spring; This last afternoon must be pleasing. Europe, Europe is over, but they lie here still, While the wind, increasing, Sands teeth, sands eyes, sands taste, sands everything.            "Late August on the Lido" is reprinted with permission from Selected Poetry, Copyright © 1993 by John Hollander. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.    Poetry by Hollander Selected Poetry (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995)   Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on  weekdays and classic poems  on weekends. Browse the  Poem-A-Day Archive.       August 20, 2013 John Hollander wrote and edited numerous books of poetry and criticism including, Picture Window (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003) and A Crackling of Thorns (Yale University Press, 1958), which was chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and former poet laureate of Connecticut, he taught at Connecticut College, Hunter College, the CUNY Graduate Center, and Yale, where he was the Sterling Professor emeritus of English. Hollander died on August 17, 2013, at the age of 83. Related Poems The Transparent Man by Anthony Hecht To a Butterfly by James Merrill Endings by Mona Van Duyn   Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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