Louise Glück, from “Vita Nova”: “Surely spring has been returned to me, this time / not
as a lover but a messenger of death, yet / it is still spring, it is still
meant tenderly.”
The
snow melts into ponds, and the sun striates through our front window. Our girls
barely notice, having been in the house for too long.
Philadelphia
poet Pattie McCarthy posts an image of a box filled with found materials, an
archive from a series of walks by one of her three children. The attentions
here are important, and by not including a description of such here, what might
you imagine such an archive might hold?
The
poem “Thanks,” by W.S. Merwin, from the Academy of American Poets website, seems
to have gained added resonance, as it begins: “Listen / with the night falling
we are saying thank you [.]” There is something quite fascinating to see the
rise in poems being posted on social media during these shut-ins, although I could
easily be caught in my own social-media bubble, predominantly following a list
of literary writers, practitioners and enthusiasts that would, of course,
naturally be seeking salve through literary works. Where else might we turn,
but to books? The resonance is there, and one shared with the daily city-wide
applause for front-line workers, including medical staff, heard from balconies
and windows across Vancouver, to a similar ‘thank you’ in Montreal, as Martha
Wainwright recently led her city in a sing-along of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
The widespread acknowledgment of those on the front-lines has been gratifying, especially
against the growing understanding of what it is they’re up against, from the numbers
of loss, the stories of hospital overflow, and the frightening knowledge of
supply shortages worldwide. Merwin’s short piece ends:
with nobody listening we
are saying thank you
we are saying thank you
and waving
dark though it is
