By Robert Pinsky
Sunday, October 22, 2006; BW12

Liam Rector's new book, The Executive Director of the Fallen World , expresses a stringent yet generous tone toward the profane, ignoble world of his title. Without necessarily forgiving himself or the rest of greedy and needy humanity, Rector chooses instead a dry, somewhat charitable acknowledgment that the world is . . . worldly:

When he was 23 and beautiful

He liked to hang around

With other beautiful people.

He liked to get intoxicated with them,

Have sex with them, make money

With them. Among them,

He found, one did not have to strain.

Other people

Wanted to hang around with them

And came bearing gifts,

A little something. (These

Gift-bearers were a lot like

Politics itself is, "Showbiz

For ugly people.") In this world

If anything went wrong there

Was always enough money around

To cover it. After he was through

With this crowd he started hanging

Out with a bunch of academic

Gangsters. These were

A different crew altogether:

Smart, on the main, but mean

And eaten alive by resentment.

They never had enough money

And were bitter beyond belief,

Compared, say,

To a troupe of electricians.

Freud said somewhere

In our unconscious

We are always 23.

Understatement gives force to small, cunning touches. Against the flat landscape of phrases such as "a little something," the definition of politics stands out. The ordinariness of "hanging out" and "eaten alive" emphasizes the anger in the less casual, more energetic phrase "academic gangsters." The academics are a "bunch" like grapes and then a "crew" like sailors (or thugs), but the theatrical term "troupe" for the electricians is like an offhand laugh, like the comparison of politics and "showbiz." Bunch, crew, troupe; "beautiful people," academics, electricians -- the differences among these groups matter less than the similarities, the poem implies.

Fatalistic about the behavior of groups, the poem is equally resigned to the "fallen" nature of the individual, as the final stanza demonstrates, with its sudden veering to Freud. No one is ever entirely immune to the forces of desire and resentment, the poem suggests, just as no one is entirely, permanently, "beautiful." There's a forgiving element, a sad shrug and smile, in the idea that the vulnerabilities, failings and dreams of our early 20s persist, somewhere in us, for the rest of life. And though worldly, that notion attributed to Freud suggests the opposite of "disillusion": the beautiful albeit deluded youth inside us endures, and keeps wanting the world.

Liam Rector's poem "Twenty-Three" is from his book "The Executive Director of the Fallen World." The University of Chicago Press. Copyright 2006 by Liam Rector.