Again the Far Morning New and Selected Poems
v/22
Adjacent week will exist our last of daily pandemic poems equally we move into the summer months. Yet, in changing the format to a weekly poem, I hope that you will keep to submit your wonderful suggestions to ghiggin [at] emory [dot] edu.
Irish poet, Derek Mahon claims that there must be three things in combination before verse can happen — "soul, song and formal necessity." A master craftsman of poetic form, Mahon has long investigated the nighttime night of the soul. In fact, he said, "It'southward practically my subject, my theme: solitude and community; the weirdness and terrors of solitude: the stifling and consolations of customs. Also, the consolations of solitude."
Hither, for the Memorial Day weekend is his 2011 verse form, "Everything is Going to exist All Correct":
Everything is Going to be All Right
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a loftier tide reflected on the ceiling?
At that place volition exist dying, there will exist dying,
but there is no need to get into that.
The poems menstruation from the manus unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart;
the sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and vivid.
I lie hither in a riot of sunlight
watching the day pause and the clouds flight.
Everything is going to be all right. Derek Mahon
5/21
Today'due south wonderful example of poetry in motion was called by John Sitter:
"As Thoreau traveled widely in Concord, A.R. Ammons seems to take meandered mainly in Ithaca. In a time of limited travel it helps to be reminded that so much happens at habitation."
Cascadilla Falls
I went down past Cascadilla
Falls this
evening, the
stream below the falls,
and picked upwards a
handsized stone
kidney-shaped, testicular and
idea all its motions into it,
the 800 mph earth spin,
the 190-1000000-mile yearly
displacement effectually the sunday,
the overriding
grand
haul
of the milky way with the 30,000
mph of where
the sun'southward going:
thought all the interweaving
motions
into myself: dropped
the stone to dead residuum:
the stream from other motions
broke
rushing over it:
shelterless,
I turned
to the sky and stood notwithstanding:
oh
I do
not know where I am going
that I can live my life
by this single creek.
five/xx
William Tolbert chose William Carlos Williams' verse form 'Danse Russe' for today:
"I accept ever loved this verse form. Williams merely packs so much narrative into such an oddly relatable, intimate, and strange image. It's silly and comforting and poignant and sad. It'south a lot of stuff. While I wouldn't say I share the exact same emotion equally the speaker of this verse form, I am finding that I occasionally miss the pre-pandemic quiet that came with working in isolation from home while my wife was at piece of work and my daughter was at school. I have also found the odd elation of waking upwards before the residuum of my family unit (my north room has delightful sunlight just, sadly, no mirror). I imagine that a lot of people accept a new, or maybe more developed, human relationship with loneliness these days."
Danse Russe
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lone, alone.
I was built-in to be alone,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my confront,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
confronting the xanthous drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am non
the happy genius of my household?
5/nineteen
The cute poem for today was chosen by Angelika Bammer who writes:
"This poem is by the Chinese poet, who publishes under the name, Bei Dao; it is translated by Bonnie South. McDougall. Information technology is part of a serial of poems he wrote between 1979 and 1983. My response to this verse form is always a mix of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I find it securely comforting. On the other hand, it deepens my sense of foreboding at the losses we both experience and caryatid for. But the two lines, "if love is not forgotten/ hardship leaves no memory," remain with me in this time of dread every bit a promise."
Stretch out your hands to me
don't let the world blocked by my shoulder
disturb you lot any longer
if dearest is not forgotten
hardship leaves no memory
remember what I say
not everything will come to laissez passer
if at that place is only ane last aspen
continuing alpine at the stop of the route
like a gravestone without an epitaph
the falling leaves will likewise speak
fading paling equally they tumble
slowly they freeze over
holding our heavy footprints
of course no one knows tomorrow
tomorrow begins from some other dawn
when we will be fast asleep
5/18
An commodity in Saturday's Guardian discusses Republic of ireland'due south plough to poesy to ease the strain of lockdown and social isolation. This series was partly inspired by a tweet from the Irish health government minister quoting Seamus Heaney. Lately the Taoiseach (prime minister), Leo Varadker, has been dubbed a "super-spreader in a poetry pandemic" considering he quotes Heaney and so often. Today's poem, chosen by Rebecca McGlynn, is an extract from Heaney's play, The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. These lines were often quoted past President Nib Clinton during the negotiations for peace in Ireland in the 1990s and accept recently been revived in campaign speeches by Joe Biden.
Rebecca writes, "I e'er turn to Heaney'south work in times of stress and feet. Information technology never fails to provide comfort. The final lines here have a item resonance right at present."
History says don't hope
On this side of the grave.
Only and so, in one case in a lifetime
The longed for tidal moving ridge
Of justice can ascent up
And promise and history rhyme.
So promise for a great sea-modify
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.
v/15
We terminate our 8th week of Pandemic Poetry with Lynn Unger's 'On the Other Side,' chosen by Frances Smith Foster.
On the Other Side
(Lynn Unger)
Through the looking glass,
downward the rabbit hole,
into the wardrobe and out
into the enchanted forest
where animals talk
and danger lurks and nothing
works quite the fashion it did earlier,
you take fallen into a new story.
It is possible that y'all
are much bigger—or smaller—
than you idea.
It is possible to drown
in the body of water of your ain tears.
It is possible that mysterious friends
have armed yous with magical weapons
y'all don't nevertheless sympathise,
but which you volition need
to save your own life and the globe.
Everything hither is foreign.
Zip quite makes sense.
That'due south how it works.
Practise not confuse the outset
of the story with the end.
five/14
Deepika Bahri introduces today's disturbing poem:
Philip Larkin wrote "Myxomatosis" in 1954, partly in response to the horror of human cruelty to animals, and partly to annotate on the terror of nuclear war and the state of self-deception in which humans live. "Myxomatosis," a disease caused by the Myxoma virus, was intentionally used to control the European rabbit population in several countries, including United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, in the 1950s. Larkin's poem deftly captures the invisibility of the threat, the poet's inability to explain suffering or its manmade sources, and the helpless land of waiting for things to "come up correct again." Larkin may have been contemptuous and politically incorrect in and then many ways, but, as Christopher Hitchens notes, "about suffering, he was seldom wrong."
Myxomatosis
Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go past
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to enquire.
I make a precipitous reply,
Then clean my stick. I'm glad I tin can't explain
Just in what jaws you lot were to suppurate:
You may take thought things would come up right again
If you could simply keep quite still and wait.
5/13
Today's pandemic verse form, chosen by Paul Kelleher, takes a different turn — "Something'southward Coming" fromWestward Side Story. Paul writes:
"Although I've lately taken keen comfort in, for instance, the work of Mary Oliver and W. H. Auden, more than often, I've been turning to some of the greatest poetry of the last century, poetry written to be sung to a popular or mass audience. For my money, Stephen Sondheim is ane of our great poets. Recently, on March 22, Sondheim turned xc (happy birthday!).
'Something's Coming' reminds me of the keen pleasures of packing into a theater, shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, waiting for the pall to go up on a Broadway show. Those days volition come up again–as Sondheim puts it, 'Will it be? Yes, it volition. / Maybe merely by belongings still, / It'll exist there!' (If you want to sing along, I recommend Larry Kert'due south rousing, joy-inducing rendition from the original Broadway cast album.)"
"Something's Coming" (music: Leonard Bernstein; lyrics: Stephen Sondheim)
Could exist!
Who knows?
In that location'due south something due any day;
I will know correct away,
Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballing down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye,
Bright as a rose!
Who knows?
It's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feeling at that place'southward a miracle due,
Gonna come up true,
Coming to me!
Could it exist? Yeah, information technology could.
Something's coming, something adept,
If I tin expect!
Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
But it is
Gonna be corking!
With a click, with a shock,
Phone'll jingle, door'll knock,
Open up the latch!
Something's coming, don't know when, but it's soon;
Catch the moon,
One-handed take hold of!
Around the corner,
Or whistling down the river,
Come on, deliver
To me!
Will information technology be? Yes, it will.
Maybe just by holding notwithstanding,
Information technology'll exist there!
Come on, something, come on in, don't be shy,
Meet a guy,
Pull upwardly a chair!
The air is bustling,
And something great is coming!
Who knows?
It'southward only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Maybe tonight…
five/12
The poem for today, 'To Exist of Use,' by Marge Piercy was chosen past Rosemarie Garland-Thompson.
TO Be OF Utilise
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes well-nigh out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that chemical element,
the blackness sleek heads of seals
bouncing like one-half-submerged balls.
I dear people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things frontwards,
who exercise what has to exist done, again and once more.
I desire to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the numberless forth,
who are non parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the nutrient must come up in or the burn be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to deport
and a person for work that is existent.
5/xi
On graduation day, Ben Reiss shares Elizabeth Bishop's masterpiece, 'One Fine art.' Ben writes:
"The pandemic paints in many shades of grief. Millions accept lost jobs and livelihoods, and many have lost loved ones. We have all lost the company of friends; the pleasures of travel, live music, loud restaurants, and theatre; the graduation ceremonies and the run a risk to say goodbye to students, classmates, and colleagues before summer; a sense of solidity and certainty about our earth and our way of life. Only at that place are moments of beauty and connectedness, too. Terminal Friday, nosotros had a wonderful Zoom celebration for our love Jericho Brown after he won the Pulitzer Prize. Some onetime friends joined u.s.a. for an hour that felt total of the richness of life. 1 of the people on the call was Kevin Young, the not bad poet, archivist and editor, joining the states from New York. This weekend, I returned to Kevin's edited collection, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief & Healing, to see what it could teach me near grieving in this new context. I turned offset to the poem that contains the line that gives the book its title, by Elizabeth Bishop. I find information technology gives excellent pedagogy in how to build up grief muscles, starting slow and piece of cake like a runner stretching, and building toward a marathon."
I Art
The fine art of losing isn't hard to primary;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to exist lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every twenty-four hours. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour desperately spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practise losing further, losing faster:
places and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my female parent's watch. And look! My concluding, or
side by side-to-last of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to chief.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I endemic, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, just it wasn't a disaster.
-Fifty-fifty losing yous (the joking voice, a gesture
I honey) I shan't accept lied. It's evident
the art of losing'south not too difficult to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
5/8
Today'south poem is for all mothers (and their children) and is especially in memory of my own wonderful female parent, Mary Higgins.
And did you get what
you lot wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you desire?
To phone call myself beloved, to feel myself
love on the earth.
"Tardily Fragment" by Raymond Carver, from A New Path to the Waterfall, 1989.
5/seven
Jim Morey shares this pithy poem for today past Emily Dickinson, "No one packs more than poetic punch, give-and-take for word, than Emily Dickinson. Despite the brevity of the poem –only a quatrain–it is a ballad stanza (XAXA, 7-six-vii-half dozen) and thus implies that it is part of a longer poem, and of a longer story."
"Organized religion" is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!
5/6
Today's poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo was chosen past Levin Arnsperger. Joy Harjo has just been elected for a second term as America's Poet Laureate. Levin writes, " I first read this poem in a grade at Emory, and I take taught information technology a couple of times since then. Every bit we are all nevertheless spending much of our days at home, it seems fitting to await at a poem that declares the centrality of the kitchen table."
Possibly the World Ends Here
Past Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, assault the table. So it has been since cosmos, and it will become on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from information technology. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
Information technology is hither that children are given instructions on what information technology means to be homo. Nosotros make men at information technology, nosotros brand women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams potable coffee with us as they put their artillery around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-downward selves and as we put ourselves back together in one case again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sunday.
Wars take begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A identify to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table nosotros sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Mayhap the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the final sweetness bite.
five/5
In celebration of the news that our vivid colleague Jericho Brown has only been awarded the 2020 Pulitzer prize for The Tradition, here is his poem, 'The Virus.' The Pulitzer citation honors "A collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence."
The Virus
Dubbed undetectable, I can't impale
The people you lot touch, and I can't
Blur your view
Of the pansies you've planted
Exterior the window, meaning
I can't kill the pansies, but I desire to.
I desire them dying, and I want
To do the killing. I want you
To listen that I'g however here
Only beneath your skin and in
Each organ
The style anger dwells in a man
Who studies the history of his nation.
If I can't get out you
Dead, I'll have
You vexed. Look. Wait
Once again: evidence me the color
Of your flowers now.
5/4 We begin the calendar week with Harry Thomas'due south powerful poem, 'Deor,' chosen by Daniel Bosch.
Deor
Quondam English
Wayland in Värmland
suffered adversities,
that potent-minded homo
knew misery.
Bitter setbacks, pains
of winter cold, these
were his companions.
His truck was with trouble
afterward Nithhad had done
the violence to him—
hacking his hamstrings,
hobbling the better human being.
—That was endured;
so may this exist.
Beadohilde despaired
when her brothers were butchered,
but when she was sure
she carried a child—
that was what wrecked her.
She couldn't conceive
of a future.
—That was endured
so may this be.
We've all of usa heard
how the Geat loved Mathilde,
loved her without limit,
loved with such dearest
his slumber was shattered.
—That was endured;
so may this be.
Thirty years Theodric
ruled the Maeringa'south town.
The facts are all known.
—That was endured;
and so may this be.
We all know of Eormanric
and his wolflike means—
subjugating subjects
the length of Gotland.
He was a cruel male monarch!
Men sat unmoving,
shackled to sorrow,
thinking just i matter—
to cut the king down.
—That was endured;
and so may this be.
Of myself I'll say this:
I was once the poet
of the Heodingas,
honey to my lord.
My name was Deor.
Winter to winter
I had a good holding,
a lavishing lord.
Now i Heorrenda,
a masterly human being,
finds praise in the place
until lately my lord
gave to me.
—That was endured;
then may this be.
Translated from Anglo-Saxon by Harry Thomas.
- Translator's Notation:
"Deor" is preserved in the Exeter Book, an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry that was donated to the Exeter cathedral library, where it notwithstanding is, in 1071, by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter. The verse form is probably the work of a scop of the 9thursday century. Information technology contains lines of Christian consolation that, feeling them to be at odds with the spirit of the poem, and disliking them, I have omitted. In his translation, published in The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (2010), Seamus Heaney retains the lines.
"Deor" is the first verse form in the book Some Complicities by Harry Thomas, published in 2013 by Un-gyve Press BUTTON: http://www.un-gyvepress.com in Boston.
Catalogue (pdf) Push button http://www.un-gyvepress.com/downloads/Un-Gyve%20Press%20Catalogue.pdf
5/ane
Our May Day poem called by Michelle Wright is 'The Universe is a House Party,' from Tracy Yard. Smith's Life on Mars. A reminder, as Michelle says "that even when staying abode and possibly standing absolutely all the same, at that place'southward a party going on in the universe."
THE UNIVERSE IS A HOUSE PARTY
The universe is expanding. Look: postcards
And panties, bottles with lipstick on the rim,
Orphan socks and napkins stale into knots.
Speedily, wordlessly, all of it whisked into file
With radio waves from a generation ago,
Globe-trotting to the edge of what doesn't finish,
Like the air inside a balloon. Is it brilliant?
Will our eyes crimp close? Is it molten, atomic,
A conflagration of suns? Information technology sounds like the kind of party
Your neighbors forget to invite you lot to: bass throbbing
Through walls, and anybody thudding around drunk
On the roof. We grind lenses to an incommunicable force,
Indicate them toward the future, and dream of beings
We'll welcome with indefatigable hospitality:
How marvelous you've come! We won't flinch
At the pinprick mouths, the nubbin limbs. We'll ascent,
Gracile, robust. Mi casa es su casa. Never more sincere.
Seeing us, they'll know exactly what nosotros mean.
Of course, it's ours. If it's anyone's, it's ours.
4/30
Emily Dickinson has been nominated more than whatever other poet in this series. Today, we accept Kate Nickerson's pick, 'Nosotros grow accustomed to the Dark.' Kate writes, "Of course, Emily Dickinson was a champion social-distancer, and I've had a lot of her lines running through my head. I like this one every bit a style to think about slowly adjusting to new circumstances (and every bit a style to think Dickinson's sly comedy.)"
We abound accustomed to the Dark —
When light is put away —
Every bit when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye —
A Moment — We uncertain pace
For newness of the night —
And so — fit our Vision to the Dark —
And encounter the Route — erect —
And so of larger — Darknesses —
Those Evenings of the Brain —
When non a Moon disclose a sign —
Or Star — come up out — within —
The Bravest — grope a little —
And sometimes hit a Tree
Straight in the Brow —
But as they learn to run across —
Either the Darkness alters —
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight —
And Life steps almost straight.4/29
I know that information technology is unusual to feature the same poet two days in a row just this moving tribute to Eavan Boland by Richard Hermes arrived yesterday:
"She was ane of the kickoff poets to make me love poetry. As an undergraduate biological science major, her verse form 'White Hawthorn in the West of Republic of ireland' thrilled me with its assertion that nature could 'seem to exist…language.' And I remember vividly her visit to the department in the tardily xc's — not the content of her seminar discussion, simply the tone. I'd never seen anyone so unvarnished in her seriousness nearly the work of thinking most literature, so comfortable putting imprecise ideas in their identify! It was both intimidating and inspiring. Like her speaker in 'Quarantine,' she fabricated 'no identify' for 'inexact praise,' insisting instead on a 'merciless inventory' of whatever it was her imagination turned to in the poem. She will exist missed."
—
Quarantine
Eavan Boland – 1944-2020
In the worst hr of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a homo prepare out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking—they were both walking—north.
She was ill with famine fever and could not go on up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that w and w and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.
In the morning they were both found expressionless.
Of common cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held confronting his breastbone.
The terminal estrus of his flesh was his last gift to her.
Allow no love poem e'er come to this threshold.
There is no identify here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only fourth dimension for this merciless inventory:
Their death together in the wintertime of 1847.
Too what they suffered. How they lived.
And what at that place is betwixt a man and adult female.
And in which darkness it tin all-time be proved.four/28
Yesterday, the wonderful Irish poet Eavan Boland died at her habitation in Dublin. A pioneer of women's verse she transformed Irish writing at a fourth dimension when she said it was easier to put a bomb than a baby in a poem. Professor and Director of the Creative Writing program at Stanford since 1996, she returned abode to Ireland last month to exist with her family during the pandemic. Countless readers across the globe are mourning her loss and cherishing her poems.
Writing in The Irish Times last calendar week, Boland said: "When I teach, there are always books I recommend to students. My primary category, withal, is but this: books I wish I'd read when I was younger. I don't think I knew when I was a student that books don't just engage you. They change you. Long later the volume is airtight you take those changes with y'all into your life, where they continue to instruct it. They alter what you know and add to it. Yous may well read the volume afterwards. Only those mysterious changes you never become back. I wish I'd understood that sooner."
Of the many Boland poems that have changed me, this is the one I'd similar to share today –
The Necessity for Irony
On Sundays,
when the rain held off,
later lunch or afterward,
I would become with my twelve year old
daughter into town,
and put downward the time
at junk sales, antiquarian fairs.
At that place I would
lean over tables,
absorbed past
lace, wooden frames,
drinking glass. My girl stood
at the other stop of the room,
her flame-coloured hair
obvious whenever-
which was non often-
I turned effectually.
I turned around.
She was gone.
Grown. No longer ready
to come with me, whenever
a dry Sunday
held out its promises
of small histories. Endings.
When I was young
I studied styles: their use
and origin. Which age
was known for which
ornament: and was always drawn
to a lyric speech, a ceremonious tone.
Just never thought
I would have the need,
as I do at present, for a darker one:
Spirit of irony,
my caustic author
of the past, of memory, –
and of its pain, which returns
hurts, stings-reproach me now,
remind me
that I was in those rooms,
with my child,
with my back turned to her,
searching-oh irony!-
for beautiful things.
Eavan Boland.4/27
Living in the surprising woods that is Atlanta, nosotros are surrounded by the drama of trees. This poem comes from Paul Muldoon'southward start collection, New Weather, published when he was twenty-i. I love the kickoff 4 lines and the implicit direction – "Look up!"
Wind and Tree
In the way that well-nigh of the wind
Happens where there are trees,
Most of the world is centred
About ourselves.
Often where the air current has gathered
The trees together and together,
One tree will take
Another in her artillery and agree.
Their branches that are grinding
Madly together and together,
It is no real fire.
They are breaking each other.
Often I think I should be like
The single tree, going nowhere,
Since my own arm cannot and will not
Break the other. Yet by my broken basic
I tell new weather.
Paul Muldoon4/24
I often teach Margaret Atwood'southward eerie poem 'This is a Photograph of Me,' because information technology leads to many bully discussions about representation and self-reflexive poesy. But in my anthology, on the facing page is this extraordinary poem, 'Up.'
Up
Margaret Atwood
You wake up filled with dread.
In that location seems no reason for it.
Forenoon light sifts through the window,
there is birdsong,
yous can't get out of bed.
It's something about the crumpled sheets
hanging over the edge like jungle
foliage, the terry slippers gaping
their dark pink mouths for your feet,
the unseen breakfast— some of information technology
in the refrigerator yous practise not cartel
to open— you lot volition not dare to eat.
What prevents you? The future. The future tense,
immense as outer infinite.
Yous could get lost in that location.
No. Naught so simple. The past, its density
and drowned events pressing you lot downwards,
like body of water water, similar gelatin
filling your lungs instead of air.
Forget all that and permit's go upwards.
Try moving your arm.
Endeavor moving your head.
Pretend the house is on fire
and you must run or fire.
No, that one'southward useless.
It's never worked before.
Where is it coming from, this echo,
this huge No that surrounds yous,
silent equally the folds of the yellow
defunction, mute as the cheerful
Mexican bowl with its cargo
of mummified flowers?
(Yous chose the colours of the sun,
not the dried neutrals of shadow.
God knows you've tried.)
Now hither's a good one:
yous're lying on your deathbed.
Yous have one hour to live.
Who is it, exactly, you accept needed
all these years to forgive?
4/23
Although an autumnal poem in April, Francis Ittenbach'south choice of "November Dusk" by Siegfried Sassoon reminds us to call our own "winged lovely moments" home as best we tin can. Francis writes, "Wanting to find a chip of stillness in our lives (somewhat paradoxically, given how isolation would appear to offering such opportunities) keeps occurring in conversations I've had with friends and family; reading this poem brings that straight to mind for me."
"Nov Dusk" – Siegfried Sassoon
Ruminant, while firelight glows on shadowy walls
And dusk with the terminal leaves of autumn falls,
I hear my garden thrush whose notes again
Tell stillness later hours of gusty rain.
Can I tape tranquility intense
With harmony of center, — experience
Like a rich memory'south mind-lit monochrome?
Winged lovely moments, can I call yous habitation?
This texture is to-day'southward. Nearly as my listen
Each instant is; yet each reveals to me
November nighttime-falls known a lifetime long:
And I've no need to travel far to find
This bird who from the leafless walnut tree
Sings like the globe'southward farewell to sight and song.
4/22
Today's poem, chosen past Valerie Loichot, comes from La Fontaine's 1678 Legend "Les animaux malades de la peste." ("The Animals Sick of the Plague") Valerie writes, "I observe it particularly resonant for our times. Highlights are: 'Ils ne mouraient pas tous, mais tous étaient frappés' [they died non all, but all were struck], and the moral of the tale whereby a grass-eating scabby donkey gets scapegoated as the source of evil while the gluttons, greedy, and powerful are absolved."
The sorest ill that Heaven hath
Sent on this lower globe in wrath,–
The plague (to telephone call it by its name,)
Ane single day of which
Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,–
Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame.
They died not all, but all were sick:
No hunting now, past force or trick,
To salvage what might so soon elapse.
No food excited their want;
Nor wolf nor fox now lookout man'd to slay
The innocent and tender casualty.
The turtles fled;
So love and therefore joy were expressionless.
The lion council held, and said:
'My friends, I exercise believe
This atrocious scourge, for which we grieve,
Is for our sins a punishment
Well-nigh righteously by Heaven sent.
Permit united states our guiltiest fauna resign,
A sacrifice to wrath divine.
Perhaps this offering, truly small,
May gain the life and health of all.
By history we notice information technology noted
That lives have been only so devoted.
So allow u.s. all plough optics within,
And ferret out the hidden sin.
Himself allow no one spare nor flatter,
Only make clean censor in the affair.
For me, my appetite has play'd the glutton
Besides much and often upon mutton.
What harm had e'er my victims done?
I answer, truly, None.
Perhaps, sometimes, by hunger press'd,
I've eat the shepherd with the balance.
I yield myself, if demand there be;
And yet I recollect, in equity,
Each should confess his sins with me;
For laws of correct and justice cry,
The guiltiest alone should die.'
'Sire,' said the fox, 'your majesty
Is humbler than a rex should be,
And over-squeamish in the case.
What! eating stupid sheep a crime?
No, never, sire, at any time.
It rather was an act of grace,
A mark of accolade to their race.
And as to shepherds, i may swear,
The fate your majesty describes,
Is recompense less full than fair
For such usurpers o'er our tribes.'
Thus Renard glibly spoke,
And loud applause from flatterers broke.
Of neither tiger, boar, nor bear,
Did any slap-up inquirer dare
To inquire for crimes of loftier caste;
The fighters, biters, scratchers, all
From every mortal sin were gratuitous;
The very dogs, both groovy and small,
Were saints, equally far as dogs could be.
The donkey, confessing in his plow,
Thus spoke in tones of deep business concern:–
'I happen'd through a mead to pass;
The monks, its owners, were at mass;
Keen hunger, leisure, tender grass,
And add together to these the devil too,
All tempted me the human action to practice.
I browsed the bigness of my tongue;
Since truth must out, I own it wrong.'
On this, a hue and cry arose,
As if the beasts were all his foes:
A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise,
Denounced the ass for sacrifice–
The baldheaded-pate, scabby, ragged lout,
By whom the plague had come, no dubiety.
His fault was judged a hanging law-breaking.
'What? eat another's grass? O shame!
The noose of rope and death sublime,'
For that offence, were all likewise tame!
And shortly poor Grizzle felt the same.
Thus human courts acquit the stiff,
And doom the weak, equally therefore wrong.
4/21
Our verse form for today is Barbara Ladd's selection of James Dickey's 'The Hospital Window.'
The Hospital Window
Past James L. Dickey
I have just come downward from my male parent.
College and higher he lies
Above me in a blue calorie-free
Shed by a tinted window.
I drop through six white floors
And then pace out onto pavement.
Still feeling my begetter ascend,
I outset to cross the firm street,
My shoulder blades shining with all
The drinking glass the huge building can enhance.
Now I must turn round and face it,
And know his i pane from the others.
Each window possesses the dominicus
As though it burned there on a wick.
I wave, like a man communicable fire.
All the deep-dyed windowpanes wink,
And, behind them, all the white rooms
They turn to the color of Heaven.
Ceremoniously, gravely, and weakly,
Dozens of pale easily are waving
Back, from inside their flames.
Nevertheless 1 pure pane among these
Is the bright, erased blankness of nothing.
I know that my father is in that location,
In the shape of his decease even so living.
The traffic increases around me
Like a madness chosen down on my head.
The horns smash at me like shotguns,
And drivers lean out, driven crazy—
But at present my propped-upwardly father
Lifts his arm out of stillness at last.
The light from the window strikes me
And I plough as blueish as a soul,
Every bit the moment when I was born.
I am not afraid for my begetter—
Expect! He is smiling; he is not
Afraid for my life, either,
As the wild engines stand at my knees
Shredding their gears and roaring,
And I concur each car in its place
For miles, inciting its horn
To blow down the walls of the earth
That the dying may float without fright
In the bold bluish gaze of my father.
Slowly I move to the sidewalk
With my pin-tingling hand one-half dead
At the end of my anemic arm.
I conduct it off in amazement,
High, still higher, yet waving,
My recognized face fully mortal,
Nonetheless not; non at all, in the pale,
Drained, otherworldly, stricken,
Created hue of stained glass.
I take just come down from my father.
4/xx
Today we share a poem in retention of our dear friend — the brilliant, warm, and wonderful Pellom McDaniels, who died on Sunday morning. "No More Elegies Today" by Clint Smith was selected past Justin Shaw who writes, "It reminds me of the cute and minute even in the realities of calamity and uncertainty." For Pellom, nosotros send a heartfelt round of applause.
*No More Elegies Today*
Clint Smith
Today I volition write a verse form near a niggling girl jumping rope. It will not exist a metaphor for dodging bullets. It will not exist an apologue for skipping past despair. Only rather nigh the back & along bob of her head equally she waits for the right moment to insert herself into the blinking flashes of bound hemp. But rather about her friends on either end of the rope who plough their wrists into small flashing windmills cultivating an energy of their own. Simply rather nigh the way the chaplet in her hair bounce against the dorsum of her neck. But rather the way her feet barely touch the footing, how the rope skipping across the concrete sounds like the entire world is giving her a round of applause.
iv/17
Nosotros finish our first month of pandemic poetry with a few stanzas from the last section of W.B. Yeats's great poem "Meditations in Time of Civil State of war." Shortly after his marriage to George Hyde-Lees, Yeats bought a crumbling Norman belfry in the West of Ireland and information technology became a powerful symbol of his work as much as a dwelling place for his young helpmate. These lines show Yeats facing up to the horrors of tearing change but finding hope in the starling (stare) feeding her young exterior his window and in his plea for the honey-bees to 'Come build in the empty house of the stare.'
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; dearest-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We are airtight in, and the key is turned
On our dubiousness; somewhere
A human being is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no articulate fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty firm of the stare.
A battlement of stone or of woods;
Some 14 days of civil war;
Final night they trundled downwards the route
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty business firm of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart'due south grown barbarous from the fare;
More than substance in our enmities
Than in our dearest; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
4/16
Deepika Bahri writes, "This 2017 poem by radiologist and poet Amit Majmudar (commencement poet laureate of Ohio) is a piddling on the nose at this troubled time, but Majmudar makes the written give-and-take sing!"
Virus past AMIT MAJMUDAR
Neither video
Nor bacterium,
Doorknob-slobber droplet-
Borne mysterium,
Born of zippo, knowing
Only how to breed
Like some dandelion-clock-less
Dandelion seed,
Protean poly peptide,
Hijacker, safe-cracker,
Magical papyrus-
Scrap of genome
Sealed with a cork
To sail the maelstrom,
Mimetic malice,
Code and beaker,
Yours the bulletin
All the Muses sing:
Purity of center
Is to will one thing
4/15
Jonathan Goldberg writes, "Seeing Tony Fauci and so oftentimes reminds me of him many years ago, too speaking truth to those in power about the AIDS pandemic. Here is a poem by Eve Kososfsky Sedgwick written then":
Guys who were 35 last year are lxx this year
with lank pilus and enlarged livers,
and jaw hinges more than legible than Braille.
A killing velocity – seen some other fashion, though,
they've ambled into the eerily slow-mo
extermination army camp the city sidewalks are.
In 1980, if someone had prophesied
this rack of temporalities could come to u.s.a.,
their "cognition" would have seemed pure hate;
it would accept seemed then, and have been so.
It still is then.
Still every morning
We accept to gape the jaws of our unbelief
or conventionalities, to knowing it.
four/14
This morning, Joe Fritsch chose 'What the Living Practise' by Marie Howe, a poem that dwells on the astounding everyday – "nosotros want more and more and/so more of it."
What the Living Exercise
Marie Howe
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been chock-full for days, some utensil probably
roughshod downwardly there.
And the Drano won't work only smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes
have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we
spoke of.
Information technology'southward winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong bluish, and the sunlight
pours through
the open living room windows because the heat's on as well high in here, and
I can't plough information technology off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a purse of groceries in the street,
the handbag breaking,
I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying>
along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my>
wrist and sleeve,
I thought information technology once again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the motorcar door shut in the common cold. What you chosen
that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We desire the jump to come up and the winter to
laissez passer. Nosotros desire
whoever to telephone call or non telephone call, a letter of the alphabet, a kiss—we want more than and more and
so more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the
window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'1000 gripped by a cherishing
so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm
speechless:
I am living, I recall yous.
four/xiii
We welcome the Leap with this cautionary William Carlos Williams poem, chosen by Walter Kalaidjian. Walter writes, "I've taught this poem many times and focus on Williams's objectivist aesthetic of 'no ideas but in things' or the motif of nascence from the vantage point of a practicing poet/OB-GYN. I didn't give as much idea to the sharp contrast set up in the start line and only lately have come to capeesh the gravity of Williams'southward experience treating the 1918 influenza pandemic of which he later wrote: 'We doctors were making upwardly to lx calls a day. Several of us were knocked out, one of the younger of u.s. died, others caught the affair, and we hadn't a thing that was effective in checking that potent poison that was sweeping the world.'
Spring and All
I
By the road to the contagious infirmary
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a common cold current of air. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, continuing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All forth the road the reddish
purplish, forked, ethical, twiggy
stuff of bushes and modest trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All well-nigh them
the common cold, familiar air current-
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One past 1 objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
Merely now the stark nobility of
entrance-Withal, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip downwardly and brainstorm to awaken
4/10
Nosotros stop our 3rd calendar week sheltering in place with John Sitter's apt selection, 'Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room.' John writes, "I've plant myself thinking of this verse form by Wordsworth several times recently. In normal seasons, we students of literature probably hear the concluding "meta" lines most conspicuously. Simply now the metaphors accept their say."
"Nuns fret non at their convent's narrow room"
Nuns fret non at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit down blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High every bit the highest Superlative of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet'southward scanty plot of footing;
Pleased if some Souls (for such at that place needs must be)
Who take felt the weight of also much liberty,
Should detect brief solace there, equally I take found.
4/ix
Today, Erwin Rosinberg chose Louise Erdrich's 'Advice to Myself' because it leans into the messy disruption of everyday patterns and routines. As Erwin writes, information technology besides insists that something new can abound out of this procedure of dent downwards to essentials.
Advice to Myself
Louise Erdrich
Go out the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the lesser drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen flooring.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked basin out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Purchase prophylactic pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind take its manner, then the earth
that invades as dust and and so the dead
foaming up in greyness rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't go on all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the accurate—decide first
what is accurate,
and then go after information technology with all your middle.
Your heart, that place
y'all don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with brutal mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, e'er,
or cry over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls downwards or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you lot telephone call necessity.
4/8
Today Melissa Yang chose Jorie Graham's beautiful verse form, "The Geese," which "illuminates entangled movements in the natural globe and the everyday piece of work of pregnant-making with elegance and urgency." The poet Kerry Hardie one time said, when she visited Emory many years agone, that so much of 'women's work' involves looking down but that she had always loved hanging out the washing because it involves looking up at the sky. Melissa adds, "This is a poem I ofttimes revisit in my research and one I find meditative to re-read in moments of chaos."
4/vii
Nathan Suhr- Sytsma chose this untitled gem by Lucille Clifton. He discussed this poem with the students in his 'Introduction to Verse' class on the beginning 24-hour interval of remote pedagogy a couple of weeks ago. Every bit he says, the last few lines have a new resonance in this moment.
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and adult female
what did i see to exist except myself?
i made it upwards
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my ane mitt holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
four/6
Our week begins with Pat Cahill's pick of Adrienne Rich's verse form from 1991 that takes its title from a Bertolt Brecht verse form that asks, "What kind of times are these/ When to talk about trees is near a crime/ Because it means keeping silent about and so many wrongs?" Pat writes, "Reading this poem in our own perilous times, I am moved by the gorgeous cadences through which she evokes both trees and wrongs as well as by the sense of urgency in her direct accost: a warning to non expect abroad from the dire truths and dreadful complicities that define what is happening right here and correct now."
What Kind of Times Are These
By ADRIENNE RICH
There'due south a identify between two stands of copse where the grass grows uphill
and the former revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a coming together-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I've walked there picking mushrooms at the border of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is non somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own means of making people disappear.
I won't tell yous where the identify is, the nighttime mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to purchase it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won't tell you where it is, then why exercise I tell yous
anything? Because you still listen, because in times similar these
to take you heed at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.
four/three
As we head into the weekend, let the states take to heart Laura Otis's choice of Anne Bradstreet'due south "To My Dear and Loving Husband." Laura writes, " I believe this is a good time to exist thinking well-nigh love, which can take so many different forms. Some of us are locked in with others; some lonely, but I am sure we are all thinking well-nigh other people and the feelings nosotros have had and still have for them."
To My Honey and Loving Hubby
Anne Bradstreet – 1612-1672
If e'er two were i, then surely we.
If e'er man were loved by married woman, then thee;
If ever married woman was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy dear more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth concur.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought just dear from thee give recompense.
Thy honey is such I can no way repay;
The heavens advantage thee manifold, I pray.
Then while nosotros alive, in love let'southward so persever,
That when we alive no more we may live ever.
4/two
Today, Ross Knecht chose the pertinent 'A Litany in Time of Plague' by Thomas Nashe. When we talked about this poem in our virtual happy hr last week, we thought that it had been written in the wake of the London plague of 1603. Even so, Ross tells me that it was published in 1600 and that Nashe himself died in 1601.
A Litany in Time of Plague
Thomas Nashe
Cheerio, good day, earth's elation;
This world uncertain is;
Fond are life'southward lustful joys;
Death proves them all just toys;
None from his darts can fly;
I am sick, I must dice.
Lord, have mercy on us!
Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gilt cannot purchase y'all wellness;
Physic himself must fade.
All things to end are made,
The plague full swift goes by;
I am ill, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on u.s.!
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens take died immature and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen's heart.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!
Force stoops unto the grave,
Worms feed on Hector dauntless;
Swords may not fight with fate,
Earth yet holds open her gate.
"Come, come!" the bells do cry.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on usa!
Wit with his wantonness
Tasteth decease's bitterness;
Hell's executioner
Hath no ears for to hear
What vain art can reply.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, accept mercy on us!
Haste, therefore, each degree,
To welcome destiny;
Heaven is our heritage,
Globe merely a thespian's stage;
Mount nosotros unto the heaven.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on u.s.a.!
iv/1 I honey today's short poem, 'Form,' by Irish gaelic poet Michael Longley because it does exactly what it claims linguistic communication tin't do. A form is also the word for the flattened nest of grass or habitation of the hare.
Permit the content speak for itself.
Form
Trying to tell it all to you and cover everything
Is similar awakening from its grassy form the hare:
In that make-shift shelter your mitt, then my mitt,
Mislays the hare and the warmth information technology leaves behind.
Michael Longley
3/31
Today'south poem was chosen by Joonna Trapp who writes:
This verse form has always been with me since my first class on Milton as a sophomore. Patience isn't one of my virtues. Milton "chides" and reminds me that waiting is part of human being existence. And and then, we await. And hope.
WHEN I consider how my low-cal is spent
E're half my days, in this night world and broad,
And that one Talent which is death to hibernate,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My truthful account, lest he returning admonish,
Doth God verbal 24-hour interval-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; Merely patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not demand
Either human'south work or his own gifts, who all-time
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him all-time, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And mail o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who but stand and waite.
John Milton. 1608–1674
3/30
Our week begins with Walt Whitman, chosen by Jericho Brown. Walt Whitman Song of Myself, 27
(Round and round we go, all of us, and e'er come back thither,)
If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its draconian vanquish were plenty.
Mine is no callous vanquish,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I laissez passer or stop,
They seize every object and lead information technology harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, experience with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else's is most as much as I can stand.
3/27
Today's verse form was chosen by Bailey Betik particularly for the last judgement and all its audacious, necessary promise.
"Terminate Me If You've Heard This One Before" by Kaveh Akbar
I can't fifty-fifty remember my own name, I who remember
and then much-football scores, magic tricks
deep dear
and then shut to God it was practically religious
When y'all autumn comatose in that sort of love y'all
wake up with bruises on your neck. I don't
take drunks, sirs, I have adventures. Every day
my torso follows me effectually
asking for things. I try to call back louder, endeavour
to exist brilliant, wildly brilliant (and naked
though I tin can never be naked enough). We all want
the aforementioned thing (to walk in sincere wonder,
like the start man to hear a parrot speak) but nosotros live
on an enormous flatness floating between
two oceans. Sometimes y'all just have to leave
whatever's existent to y'all, you have to clomp
through fields and boot the caps off
all the toadstools. Sometimes
you have to march all the style to Galilee
or the literal foot of God himself before you realize
y'all've already passed the place where
you lot were supposed to die. I can no longer think
the existence agape, only that it came to an end.
3/26
Today's poem, 'Anything tin Happen,' by Seamus Heaney. Chosen past Ron Schuchard as a fashion of seeing human calamities, by, present and future.
Anything Can Happen
subsequently Horace, Odes, I, 34
Anything tin can happen. Yous know how Jupiter
Will more often than not wait for clouds to assemble head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well, merely at present
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
Across a articulate blueish sky. Information technology shook the earth
And the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Annihilation can happen, the tallest towers
Exist overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off 1,
Setting information technology down bleeding on the next.
Ground gives. The heaven's weight
Lifts upwardly off Atlas similar a kettle-lid.
Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores eddy away.
3/25
Happy to inaugurate our series of 'Poems for Pandemic' with this Emily Dickinson poem chosen by Ben Reiss.
Nosotros abound accustomed to the Nighttime —
When light is put away —
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Cheerio —
A Moment — We uncertain pace
For newness of the night —
And so — fit our Vision to the Dark —
And meet the Road — erect —
And then of larger — Darkness —
Those Evenings of the Brain —
When not a Moon disclose a sign —
Or Star — come out — within —
The Bravest — grope a little —
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead —
But equally they learn to see —
Either the Darkness alters —
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight —
And Life steps almost direct.
Source: https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/english/2020/05/25/poems-for-pandemic/
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