the only prisoner is always in, not knowing what he’s done

You might come here Sunday on a whim. 

Say your life broke down. The last good kiss 

you had was years ago. You walk these streets 

laid out by the insane, past hotels 

that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try 

of local drivers to accelerate their lives. 

Only churches are kept up. The jail 

turned 70 this year. The only prisoner 

is always in, not knowing what he’s done. 

 

The principal supporting business now 

is rage. Hatred of the various grays 

the mountain sends, hatred of the mill, 

The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls 

who leave each year for Butte. One good 

restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out. 

The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines, 

a dance floor built on springs— 

all memory resolves itself in gaze, 

in panoramic green you know the cattle eat 

or two stacks high above the town, 

two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse 

for fifty years that won’t fall finally down. 

 

Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss 

still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat 

so accurate, the church bell simply seems 

a pure announcement: ring and no one comes? 

Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium 

and scorn sufficient to support a town, 

not just Philipsburg, but towns 

of towering blondes, good jazz and booze 

the world will never let you have 

until the town you came from dies inside? 

 

Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty 

when the jail was built, still laughs 

although his lips collapse. Someday soon, 

he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up. 

You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself. 

The car that brought you here still runs. 

The money you buy lunch with, 

no matter where it’s mined, is silver 

and the girl who serves your food 

is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

[Richard Hugo {1923-1982} ‘Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg’, from The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry]