Now Tell Us Who’s Been Cruel to You

Which would be harder
To excavate—hurt
Done to you or hurt

You did? Don’t answer.
Literature will
Answer this for you—

Tally all the poems
And memoirs brimming
Full of hurt endured.

How many focus
On what the writer,
As hurt-doer, did?

Don’t answer. You know.
If you answer, you
Might have to confess.

The Lines Leading the Lines

We don’t know who you are
(A human, we presume).
For that very reason,

We don’t know who you aren’t.
If we had to hazard
A guess, we’d say you know

Who you are, or think so,
But then the thought stabs us
That you, at this moment,

As you encounter us,
Don’t know who you are,
Or feel that you don’t know,

And we feel a small rush
Of tender empathy,
Imagining someone

Perusing us, someone
Reading us with a pang
Thinking, I don’t know how

These words could know I don’t
Know who I am. Poor thing!
Don’t cry. You’re mostly words,

When you reflect on it,
Whoever you are, and
No more clueless than us.

Pain’s Both Calm and Quarrelsome

Altercations alternate
With peaceable, silent lulls.

This could be true of your friends,
Family, lovers, or pets.

This could be true of nations.
This could be true of weather.

Is the alternation law?
Does every life alternate

Between loud quarrels and calm?
Is it the nature of things

Themselves, volcanos, oceans,
Chronic viral infections?

On a dove-grey afternoon,
A hermit by the wayside

Wonders whether any calm
Is a storm at the right scale.

That’s how you write of flowers
In pain in the hospital.

Dawns on You

A compact red sedan
Was left parked overnight
With its tail in the air.

Was this deliberate?
Did the owner forget
To shut the open lid?

Morning climbs down the cliffs,
A sight tourists would give,
And do give, good money

To witness, but the car
With its unattended,
Open trunk lid attracts

The looks of the locals.
Poetry is like this.

Don’t Go Anywhere

What does the escapist want—
Another world or a world
To match what’s inside the mind?

Or maybe it’s just more world,
Evasion of foreclosure.
It’s counterintuitive

That natural selection
Should have let flourish a beast
Dissatisfied with the world,

Unless dissatisfaction
Goads the flesh to keep going,
No matter how desperate.

The successful escapist,
This side of nonexistence,
Would be completely serene

At the cost of living well,
Of any accomplishment
Of any aspiration.

But that’s not what escapist
Minds pine for in their free time.
Escapist minds trap themselves,

Whatever they’re looking for,
In the act of looking for
A hatch in the trap, a door.

Words Reflecting off the Window

Pleased with yourself? No one will
Ever see you as you are

Now, typing at the table,
Purring kitten under chin,

Crescent moon in lavender
And peach winter sky outside.

Digital music’s playing
Something soothing from machines.

You’re thinking of poetry
Other than these lines, other

Than your quiet moment now,
Those anguished poems on the shelf

Behind you, composed by lives
In languages loathed and loved,

Translated into language
They never knew, never was

When they wrote of how poorly
They wrote in conquerors’ tongues.

The words evolve. Those poets
And those dialects are dead.

This language emerged from wars
Conducted after they went.

Poets colonized by words
Still have to choose which to use.

Cimafiejeva’s phrases,
Translated, have joined the shelf,

Words twice removed from her self.
Within decades, someone else.

No one will ever see you
Reflected outside tonight.