Copyright (c) 2002 First Things 119 (January 2002): 14, 34, 39.
We meet our griefs again when work is through
and do with words what little words can do.
A stranger weeps beside us through the night.
Beneath our pleasant sun, we never knew
the dark that hates the sky for being bright.
We thought to build a garden without rue,
to climb and, all–beloved, to reach the height.
Our sins were trifling, the false called true,
a petty disbelief in wrong and right.
For every sin we pay, but no sin drew
these hates. It is our virtue they requite.
Along the shore, the squabbling seabirds mew
at passing ships and wheel away in fright.
We meet our griefs again when work is through.
We do with words what little words can do.
—J. Bottum
It’s not, though: Anyone can tell you this is
absolutely not an artichoke.
And the Jerusalem that it professes?
Some Italian costermonger spoke
about the sunflower—the English heard
not girasole but Jerusalem—
and, naming these vile tubers, they conferred
an accidental dignity on them.
People say a flower shows us
certain proof that there’s a God;
is Helianthus tuberosus’
ugly tuber—sunk in sod—
proof of the devil? If the flower
needs the root, the devil’s sent
expressly by a higher power:
Neither thing’s an accident.
—Deborah Warren
A payload of people phoning home:
their ghost voices linger, caught on tapes,
rewound, rewound, as if listening could summon them
back into themselves. The last hope’s
supplanted now with clinging to a missed
call, replaying it, imagining words—
but what?—equal to the worst
dream, which shook itself, woke, cut the cords
binding earth to sky. Now we go
yawing rudderless into our new history.
Were those God’s smouldering hindquarters we saw
between the towers? Or has this mystery,
being human, stunned even God into absence?
Whence cometh my help? The fire engine
pulling from the station winds its sirens
and we fall silent. Psychopaths grin
from their unmarked vans. Around midnight,
a drunk puking at our garden gate sounds
on the verge of detonating. And why not?
Nothing can surprise me. Night drowns
itself in sleeplessness. Then it’s day.
The veiled rain, dread’s dullest minion,
with chilly fingers drums its lullaby
—not real, not real—on the windowpane.
What’s real?Outside, in thin light,
wet lavender relinquishes its scent,
a bruised sweetness rising through the rain.
Passing the open window, caught a moment
by the cool, still smell, I forget
and almost breathe again.
—Sally Thomas