#singing about the dark times
Try to Praise the Mutilated World
Adam Zagajewski
translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
–
Ah, friends. This month feels like it vanished in a blink. The years in between each April are also starting to fly past. A la Thomas Lux. I hope you found some comfort or delight these past 30 days and I hope we can do it again next year. In the meantime: be good to yourself. Take care out there.
Today in:
2021: In Defense of a Long Engagement, Mairead Small Staid
2020:Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, Mary Oliver
2019:Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver
2018:Born Yesterday, Philip Larkin
2017:Thus, He Spoke His Quietus, Thomas Lux
2016:Trees, W.S. Merwin
2015:Today and Two Thousand Years from Now, Philip Levine
2014:from For a Long Time I Have Wanted to Write a Happy Poem, Richard Jackson
2013:Tear It Down, Jack Gilbert
2012:from An Atlas of the Difficult World, Adrienne Rich
2011:Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye
2010:from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman
2009:from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
2008:from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot
2007:Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot
2006:Preludes, T.S. Eliot
2005:A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot
aubade for the whole hood
Nate Marshall
today i offer my self
all the small kindnesses.
i’m out here
with breath in my body
though it may be stank
& body in my control
though it may be too soft
or too large or not enough.
today i offer the whole crib
a jam we ain’t heard in a minute
& permission to turn the news down
& move a hip like a suggestion
to a lover.
on this day i declare the pockmarked
street i grew up on a miracle.
i declare the bills, even the overdue
ones, a blessing. who knew
that we would still be here
to see these injustices. how can we measure
the disrespect of lack against that precious surprise?
real talk,
today i tell myself truths
other than the one that makes me low,
i give myself the gift of a joke with the homies.
real talk,
today i stay woke
to all the terror
but also to my favorite food
or my favorite place
or my best hope for our people
& i work to make all
my best lives possible.
==
Today in:
2020:Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand
2019:New Year’s Day, Kim Addonizio
2018:I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten, Jane Hirshfield
2017:The Writer, Richard Wilbur
2016:from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich
2015:I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life, Mary Oliver
2014:In the Park, Maxine Kumin
2013:To A Sad Daughter, Michael Ondaatje
2012:My Dead Friends, Marie Howe
2011:Staying After, Linda Gregg
2010:Dream Song 14, John Berryman
2009:What We Kept, Megan Alpert
2008:Please Take Back the Sparrows, Suzanne Buffam
2007:It Happens Like This, James Tate
2006:Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd
2005:September Song, Geoffrey Hill
