The knowledge not of sorrow, you were
saying, but of boredom
Is—aside from reading speaking
smoking—
Of what, Maude Blessingbourne it was,
wished to know when, having risen,
"approached the window as to see
what was really going on":
And saw rain falling, in the distance
more slowly,
The road clear form her past the window-
glass—
Of the world, weather-swept, with which
one shares the century.
George Oppen, Discrete Series, 1934