Sweetness
Lucy was blogging recently about worrying that the sky fall will fall on your head the minute you start to feel good/confident/happy about life.
I was in Edinburgh on Wednesday seeing the other D' wives and treated myself to Bloodaxe's Staying Alive, "real poems for unreal times" edited by Neil Astely. It is a fantastic anthology of 500 life affirming poems, some well loved, others new, well to me at least.
I read this one, Sweetness by Stephen Dunn. It is out there in blogland already so I hope it is alright to post it here. It is very much how I feel about the world lately.
Sweetness by Stephen Dunn
Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumble through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet . . .
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care
where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
I was in Edinburgh on Wednesday seeing the other D' wives and treated myself to Bloodaxe's Staying Alive, "real poems for unreal times" edited by Neil Astely. It is a fantastic anthology of 500 life affirming poems, some well loved, others new, well to me at least.
I read this one, Sweetness by Stephen Dunn. It is out there in blogland already so I hope it is alright to post it here. It is very much how I feel about the world lately.
Sweetness by Stephen Dunn
Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world
except the way I stumble through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.
I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet . . .
Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low
and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief
until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough
to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care
where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
posted by apprentice at
3:00 pm
4 Comments:
this poem resonates with me as well. Thanks for posting it.
I'm glad you like it too.
Thanks for commenting
There are periods when one avoids hearing, reading or watching anything sad and I seem to be in one just now.
Head in the sand for a while.
That's understanble, given the fright you've just had.
And you look for the sweetness in things as a matter of course anyway Pat.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home