Jack Warden

American Poetry Review, The, Sep/Oct 2005 by Rector, Liam

In a Woody Alien film

A physicist

Played by Jack Warden

Says to Sam Waterston,

Both of them

Sitting out

On the porch of a house

In New England

One summer night

-While putting

A very stiff drink

Into his mouth

Jack Warden, a wonderful

Character actor, says the universe

Is for him "Haphazard,

Morally neutral,

And unimaginably

Violent." Seems

That way to me,

And once Warden puts it

That way I recognize

That truth immediately.

And seems it's all

There, everything

I've really needed

To know since

I was a boy,

A very young boy

Come to sit there

By himself in the theatre,

All there

In the movies

If I would but

Go in there

And look

And listen for it.