Alibis Poem by gershon hepner

The evening should not be judge of day,
and day should not become the judge of night;
don't emphasize the end when you replay
events whose alibis are quite airtight.

Colm Tóibin writes about Tennessee Williams’s Notebooks, edited by Margaret Bradham, in the NYR, December 20,2007 (“The Shadow of Rose”) :

The entries we have begin when Williams was twenty-five and living with his family, struggling under considerable pressures to find a voice as a poet, short-story writer, and playwright. These pleasures might explain the tone of slef-obsession, self-pity, and despair. The entries seem to have been written at night and he himself became alert to their morbid self-indulgence, quoting Nietzsche: “Do not let the evening be the judge of the day.”


12/16/07