Tennis With Koko: "Happiness"

While playing almost tennis with Koko today, awaiting a devastating serve, Slothrop thought of this man and this poem, titled "Happiness".

I can remember only once feeling perfectly happy.

I was eighteen, a freshman at college.

It was October, and I was sitting on the lawn

behind my dormitory, leaning against a tree,

reading a book. It must have been Sunday.

Leaves covered the grass, though the oaks and maples

were still full of color, and the sky

was that bright and absolute blue

you see in photographs of peaceful country scenes.

The musty broken smell of autumn

floated on the air, that scent like a taste,

like the idea of change. People walked past

on their way to the library, others

slept in the sun, or read their books.

Certainly I had enough to worry about.

I'd made no friends, was not in love, didn't like

my classes. But I felt just then

at ease, and then, lazily, quite

gradually, completely happy––as if that afternoon

might continue indefinitely,

and lead seamlessly into everything

that was going to be possible for me,

which I would one day call my life. No matter

what I thought about it, this would happen,

and I did not have to think about it.

I imagined staying until dark, when someone

might come by to ask what was wrong.

Yet there was nothing I needed to say,

since I had no reason for feeling what I felt,

since the landscape was like a beautiful picture

of where I was, and so, after a few hours,

I got up, without regret, and went back to my room.

This happened, although that doesn't matter

to you, who know about the truth of poems,

how I can't convince you by insisting on the real,

can't persuade you by claiming this I is me, or was.

And yet I am not trying to persuade you of anything.

There is no conclusion, no story to conclude.

And how poor, after all, how familiar

the details seem, without excitement, or surprise.

But I never felt that way again, nor do I expect

to feel that way again, so thoughtless

and solitary, so unaccountably happy.

Koko: Happiness is double faulting, and then hitting an ace out of anger. And then double faulting again.