I Think I’m Brave Enough To Read Poems Again
At first, after you went away, I couldn’t bear them. It seemed to me all they would explain Is how everything ends. My dear friends, oldest comforts, Couldn’t save me then. Maybe they were as paint flakes Touched by a blind man, When all I could see was survival I daren’t dream of savoring. When all I had in me was running, I couldn’t speak of slowness. All I could say to myself was Live! Keep on living! Find fields in purple-spring-richness, Find myself day after day, laughing. So today it was Mary told me: Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance. Which I’ll take to heart, Which I can spin quickly into practice. Grief is not the last thing to hold me, I believe joy, too, can hold my hand. That these voices will always whisper to me That this life is bitter and gracious and heavensent, Now, I’ll take these fragments, bow my head, And listen to them.














