Anonymity

Anonymity

James A. Zoller

On the subway car in Busan, at an hour
when the seats are already filled,
perhaps it is the blue line or the green line,
the one heading for a district where we
will get off, where a friend plans to meet us.

Having boarded quickly – the train is prompt –
we find a bar to hold as the train moves out
quickly, soundlessly, before a young woman
offers you her seat, presses you to take it,
which you do, thanking her, kamsahamnida.

As it happens, I remain standing – listening
toward the automated voice to crackle
routine cautions over the speakers
and naming stops as we hurtle toward them.
I am listening for familiar sounds

in each stream of linked words that travel fast,
hoping to train my ear and then my tongue.
After each string of sounds, I repeat to no one,
repeat – a crazy man talking to himself.
All this – or just this – is on my mind

when I feel a tug on my jacket and look around
to see an old man with jet black hair
like everyone else, an old man who gestures
toward a just-vacated seat in the section
marked and reserved for the elderly

– a gesture I take to mean “take my seat,
sit, tall whitehaired foreigner in your red jacket”
– a request I refuse with a smile and a confusion
of my own, kamsahamnida, and a bow of my head
in a bowing culture, and a wave of my hand

hoping my refusal is kind enough, gentle enough
for this kind, gentle offer from these kind people
– surprised, I suppose, that we had been so closely
observed by all the faces ignoring us,
our cover so quickly blown.

---

James A. Zoller
Writer & Poet

James is Professor Emeritus of Writing and Literature at Houghton College in western New York.  He is the author of three poetry collections, including Ash & Embers (2018, Poiema/Cascade).

Photography by Levi Meir Clancy